A doctor reported in December that a medical scope commonly used to examine patients' lungs had infected 14 people with a superbug that kills half its victims.
Yet another type of scope, used to see inside the bladder, sickened three patients with a different bacteria in March, according to a nurse. The device was sent to the manufacturer, which found "foreign substances" inside despite cleaning.
And in November, a nurse manager reported that seven patients were infected with an often lethal bacteria known as clostridium difficile from a device used for colonoscopies.
The three outbreaks are among dozens of injury reports in a federal database that detail how the risk of serious infection from contaminated scopes is far broader than a specialized device that recently sickened patients at UCLA, including three who died.