Watch an excerpt from the FRONTLINE documentary "Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria," which airs Tuesday, Oct. 22 on most PBS television stations.

Drug-resistant bacteria lurks in hospitals: in sink drains, on equipment passed from room-to-room, on door handles, on the hands of clinicians and hospital workers, and in ventilators and tubes.

One particularly dangerous bug, Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase, or KPC, has been found in American hospitals in 44 states so far. That's likely an underestimate, since there is no national reporting system to track outbreaks of drug-resistant bacteria at hospitals.

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