Rochester MN (KROC AM News) - It's a far cry from the Terminator movies, but the Mayo Clinic has announced the deployment of an army of robots to battle potentially deadly microbes.

Ten of the high-tech devices have been put into operation to supplement Mayo's normal cleaning and disinfecting procedures in an effort to even further curb the presence of nasty bacteria that can result in serious complications for patients recovering from surgery and other procedures. According to a Mayo Clinic news release, the focus of the robots is killing C-diff, which is one of the most common infections a patient can contract while receiving care at a health care facility.

“C-diff is extremely distressing for our patients,” says Priya Sampathkumar, M.D., chair of Mayo Clinic’s infection control committee on Mayo Clinic’s Rochester campus. “It can be debilitating, decrease quality of life and can even result in death.”

The robots are placed in patient rooms and emit pulses of ultraviolet light that can kill off C-diff spores on exposed surfaces. Mayo began testing the robots in 2014 and noted a 30-percent reduction in the number of C-diff infections in patients using rooms cleaned by the robots when compared to rooms that did not receive the ultraviolet light treatment.

 

 

More From Fun 104