Two articles have crossed my monitor (they never really do make it to my desk), both related to MRSA and other hospital infections. The news they bring portends a catastrophe for us patients. Wise patients need to understand the components to protect themselves.
If you aren't familiar with MRSA, it's a germ that usually lives benignly on the skin of about one-third of us, but can evolve to a potentially deadly staph infection, usually acquired in hospitals by patients who are at risk due to surgery, open wounds or just by being elderly with compromised immune systems. In recent years, some MRSA has been acquired out and around in the community, too.
MRSA and other similar infections, are called superbugs, because they grow and evolve to overcome any of the antibiotics developed to kill them. Each new antibiotic works to kill these infections for a time, then the germ "learns" to be stronger than the killing agent.
Statistics tell us that about 1.7 million people acquired these resistant infections, called nosocomial infections, each year in American hospitals. Of them, at least 99,000 die. Those are staggering statistics.
Until now, we have been told that if healthcare workers stringently wash their hands, and/or use hand gel, then they will cut the transfer of these infections between or among themselves, and patients.
However.... now we learn more....
Article #1, a story from the AP (Associated Press) is based on a report which appeared in the Journal of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology regarding studies done at hospitals about the use of sanitizing hand gel. The studies showed that despite large increases and improvements in the use of hand gels, infection rates were not statistically reduced. Patients continued to acquire and die from infections.
Here's what scares me: We have known for a very long time that these infections spread by other means than just infected hands. Information has been available for a very long time that tells patients not to touch things in hospitals where germs may reside, like TV remotes, telephones, the doctor's coat or stethoscope, even the bedsheets, blankets, handrails on the beds, or the equipment that catheterizes a patient or the "tree" from which bags of nutrients, drugs and nutrients hang. If a hospital is only concerned with its personnel keeping their hands clean -- that's a start -- but MRSA is everywhere. Everything needs to be cleaned and sanitized!
Washing and sanitizing of hands should be combined with the thorough cleaning and sanitizing of all surfaces to be the most protective. Of course... now we are talking about additional cost to the hospital for the extra cleaning.... and truthfully, these infectious agents can never really be 100% clean.
Article #2 comes from Johns Hopkins Magazine, and is called "Drugs vs. Bugs." It's a very comprehensive look at MRSA, how it spreads, and how it has evolved as part of the 3 billion year history of bacteria. First identified in 1968 in Boston, MRSA sits on, what the article calls, the gas pedal of evolution. Since the first new drugs were developed to kill in, back in the 1960s, it has learned to get past it. (My personal take is that these bacteria remind me of teenagers -- no matter what we dream up to corral or contain them, they are always one step ahead of us!)
The article then goes on to evaluate why healthcare workers are not more diligent about sterilizing their hands, equipment, clothing -- studies about how often lab coats are changed, or how often equipment is cleaned (think computer keyboards) -- never enough. Johns Hopkins has a new person/position whose only job it is is to eradicate MRSA and other pathogens.... but still....
The part of the article that worries me, because it also scares the epidemiologists (the scientists who study epidemics) -- is the last paragraph. It seems there are no drugs, no nothing being developed to stop this spread, meaning, the more we contain the germs, the more they will learn to overcome that containment, the more they will continue to make patients sick or cause patient deaths. It's never ending -- or as the article so aptly ends, "Evolution never rests."
What does all this mean for us patients? It means we must aggressively fight any possibility that we, or our hospitalized loved one, might acquire a MRSA or other superbug infection. Here are some resources for doing so:
- MRSA and Other Superbug Infections
- From RID: Reduce Infection Deaths
- From the US Centers for Disease Control
- From the SafeCare Campaign
Short of aggressively protecting ourselves, we will too easily become victims of this perfect storm -- the inability of hospitals to eradicate these infections, and the inability of science to stop the evolution of superbugs.
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Photo © Alexander Oshvintsev - Fotolia.com
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me and my newborn baby got the infection mrsa from a hospital what should i do abut it