MRSA – To Catch a deadly germ

from New York Times Nov 14, 2006

To Catch a Deadly Germ

By BETSY McCAUGHEY Originally Published: November 14, 2006

WHAT kills more than five times as many Americans as AIDS?

Hospital infections, which account for an estimated 100,000 deaths every year.

Yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which are calling for voluntary blood testing of all patients to stem the spread of AIDS, have chosen not to recommend a test that is essential to stop the spread of another killer sweeping through our nation’s hospitals: MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. The CDC guidelines to prevent hospital infections, released last month, conspicuously omit universal testing of patients for MRSAThat’s unfortunate. Research shows that the only way to prevent MRSA infections is to identify which patients bring the bacteria into the hospital. The MRSA test costs no more than the HIV test and is less invasive, a simple nasal or skin swab.

Staph bacteria are the most prevalent infection-causing germs in most hospitals, and increasingly these infections cannot be cured with ordinary antibiotics. Sixty percent of staph infections are now drug resistant (that is, MRSA), up from 2 percent in 1974.

Some people carry MRSA germs in their noses or on their skin without realizing it. The bacteria do not cause infection unless they get inside the body – usually via a catheter, a ventilator, or an incision or other open wound. Once admitted to a hospital, these patients shed the germs on bedrails, wheelchairs, stethoscopes and other surfaces, where MRSA can live for many hours.

Doctors and other caregivers who lean over an MRSA-positive patient often pick up the germ on their hands, gloves or lab coats and carry it along to their next patient.

The blood-pressure cuffs that nurses wrap around patients’ bare arms frequently carry live bacteria, including MRSA In a recent study at a French teaching hospital, 77 percent of blood-pressure cuffs wheeled from room to room were contaminated. Another study linked contaminated blood-pressure cuffs to several infected infants in the nursery at the University of Iowa hospital.

Among developed nations, the United States has one of the worst records of curbing drug-resistant infections, according to the Sentry Antimicrobial Surveillance Program, an international effort to monitor drug-resistant germs. In this country, MRSA hospital infections increased 32-fold from 1976 to 2003, according to the CDC

In the 1980s, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands faced similarly soaring rates of MRSA, but nearly eradicated it. How? By screening patients and requiring health care workers treating patients with MRSA to wear gowns and gloves and use dedicated equipment to prevent the spread. The Dutch called their strategy “search and destroy.”

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