E arly in 2015, Health Canada opened the door to fecal microbiota transplantation, a promising treatment for patients with recurrent Clostridium difficile infection.1 During fecal microbiota transplantation, stool from a healthy, screened donor is homogenized and filtered and is either infused into the patient by means of colonoscopy, nasoenteric tube or enema, or taken orally in an encapsulated formulation. The procedure restores the diversity of gut microbiota that confers protection against recurrent C. difficile infection. 2 The results are remarkable: the first randomized controlled trial of the procedure for recurrent C. difficile infection was stopped early because of benefit, 3 and a high-quality meta-analysis reported an 89% clinical cure rate.2 Accordingly, medical societies and national health regulators such as the American College of Gastroenterology and the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence have adopted fecal microbiota transplantation as part of their guidelines.
4Fecal microbiota transplantation represents a novel approach for managing recurrent C. difficile infection.2,5 Clostridium difficile infection is among the most common health care-associated infections in Canada and costs more than $280 million annually. 6 The incidence has increased over the past decade, reaching an estimated 37 900 episodes in 2012, with a corresponding rise in mortality.7 With antibiotics, a patient's risk of recurrent infection is 20% after a primary episode and more than 60% after two recurrences.2 The disease burden, combined with fecal microbiota transplantation's relative effectiveness, has catalyzed rapid clinical adoption of the procedure in other countries. The new Health Canada guidance now permits fecal microbiota transplantation outside of clinical trials for Canadians with recurrent C. difficile infection.Although a welcome shift, the policy supports a model for delivering fecal microbiota transplantation that undermines its potential benefits. The guidance limits the procedure to a directed donor model, which requires the patient or physician to identify a stool donor (e.g., spouse). This model places responsibility on physicians for donor screening, material preparation, administration and monitoring for adverse events. By contrast, the universal donor model, currently allowed in the United States, 4 makes use of de-identified donors who are screened by a stool bank. Much like blood banks, stool banks provide a standardized and scalable product, and an adverse events registry. We evaluate these two models along the dimensions of patient safety, access to the procedure and cost to the health care system (Appendix 1, available at www.cmaj .ca/lookup/suppl/ doi:10.1503/cmaj.150672/-/DC1).First, although fecal microbiota transplantation has shown remarkable therapeutic benefit, its safety profile includes both procedure-related (e.g., colonoscopy-induced perforation) and material-related risks.4 Prospective long-term safety studies are ongoing, but no adverse events related to material use...