It’s disturbing to hear that new strains of drug-resistant staph germs might be killing 18,650 Americans each year — more than AIDS — and that up to half of these infections are being contracted in the health care system, according to a new study.
The incidence rate of 32 potentially deadly infections per 100,000 people was called "astounding" by the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The findings only underscore what health officials have been saying for years: Hospitals and other providers need to limit the use of antibiotics to preserve their effectiveness. Better hand washing and hygiene by health workers will be another important line of defense.
This is a wake-up call for the health care industry.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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36 Comments
What do you mean for the healtcare industry?
It is the GOVERNMENT’s responsibility! Why it’s in the constitution! How DARE the weblog editorial writer blame the healthcare industry!
Call your elected representative TODAY and demand they do SOMETHING personally to kill the superbugs.
Poppy cock germs can’t evolve! What, you want to believe there’s survival of the fittest for germs?
“Hospitals and other providers need to limit the use of antibiotics to preserve their effectiveness”
Hospitals don’t prescribe the antibiotics. Physicians do. If the AMA is astounded at the MRSA rate, perhaps they can help change the public perception that they need and antibiotic for every little sniffle. And when you get a prescription, take it all. If you don’t, you are contributing to the drug resistance problem by allowing the most resistant bugs to survive and reproduce. In your body.
outie,
You’re correct. Too many people with viral infections that can’t be treated with antibiotics often demand their doctor prescribe them. And doctors will write the prescription. Are they afraid the patient will find another doctor? What’s the bottom line, $$$ or health?
It’s always nice when we agree, outie. :)
I stayed up late and watched the repeat of KSN’s news. Not only was there a piece on the rise in staph infections, but there was a story on mental health for children in Wichita. We are the lowest in the country for helping young people with mental problems. We have only three children’s psychiatrists in the area. KU Med Center is hoping to train more to stay in Wichita.
As usual, the mentally ill don’t get the care they need.
What’s wrong with Wichita?
“What’s wrong with Wichita?”
UMM…, Maybe they drank from the Arkansas?
Only kidding.
Well if believe some of the local posters here, if you’d have build the casino, those doctors would be here by now!
This is one of many reasons why students need to understand evolution.
Evolutionary strategies are precisely what will produce the next generation of antibiotics.
“What’s wrong with Wichita?”
Let’s see, four years getting a BA/BS, four years of medical school/internship, then graduates with huge education loans, picks a city where there is money for a practise AND a nice place to live.
After all that time in school, would you pick a sleepy little midwestern town?
Uh, Randy, it’s OK by me to call the “germ” a bacterium; really it is OK, and it really is a bacterium.
Outlander’s post at 1:06 is spot on.
No, AMD, you’d move to the wealthiest area you couldn’t afford, because who cares about making anything better except yourself?
Damn, just have to say it: I agree with Outie, too (hey, can ya feel the love? ;-)
From my own experience, a Staph infection is something that you do not want make jokes about.Thanks to a hospital stay when I was a child, I have contracted a staph infection from a thorn ran into my knee joint then later became Rheumatic fever.Now supposedly I am cured from it but err to caution of possible enlarging heart can occur and other complications from it.There is a lot of derivatives from bacteria as per example “flesh-eating bacteria” is one of them and of course most people know about Strep throat.Staphylococcus and Streptococcus bacterium is all around us.Once it gets inside your system it can lock itself inside your cells, lay dormant and surface up when your immunity system drops down.You can become a carrier of the germs, not able to donate blood or organs and be a risk to those whose immunity is non-existing.
Be aware of those 2” long thorns that grow on trees here in Kansas, they are coated with the germs, it only takes a couple of hours to swell your joint up to the size of a soccer ball and kill you within four hours.
But when the news came out about handwashing a few weeks back, half of the posters went almost ballistic because they don’t want government telling them what to do.
What is wrong with people that a little common sense is seen as a threat to their freedom?
As far as healthcare workers go, the first thing a doctor or nurse should do before touching you for an exam is to wash their hands or wear gloves. If they do not do either of these things,then the patient has the right to get out of that office and inform the AMA they are not following universal precautions.
But with the healthcare industry so locked into the PPO providers and non-PPO providers, then some patients do not feel that they can tell their doctor or nurse anything because they are captive patients of that certain provider.
What good is all this technology when simple handwashing or wearing gloves could save lives?
MRSA has been identified in hospitals for more than thirty years. Hand-washing campaigns were unfortunately long delayed.
Today, some hospitals are reporting declining MRSA rates due to better hygiene and rigorous testing of high-risk admitted patients, and even hospital personnel.
Improper antibiotic prescription within hospitals has not been an issue, because treatment of bacterial infections is based on culturing samples of blood and tissue, identifying the organisms and their antibiotic sensitivity. This being said, any antibiotic that kills an identified pathogen, but is ineffective against unidentified bacteria and yeast, can promote proliferation of the latter organisms. That this occurs does not represent poor medical practice.
Campaigns to discourage community physicians from prescribing outpatient antibiotics for viral infections in which bacterial secondary infections are improbable have been ongoing since the 1970’s. Pediatricians and internists have been scrupulous about avoiding these prescriptions. Family physicians have been more susceptible to giving into patients’ or parents’ demands for antibiotics, which is not to say they do this routinely, but it happens.
MRSA transmission has been reported in schools. The Connecticut Department of Public Health’s chief epidemiologist has opined that there may be several cases a year in every school, most not serious. It may be impossible in this environment to maintain strict standards of hygiene. (Do kids pick their noses. When they have colds, do they wipe their noses and get snot on their hands?)
A study done in the Netherlands found that veterinary students and veterinarians who worked with livestock had a substantially higher rate of MRSA nose and throat colonization than the general population. They have imposed mandatory testing of patients admitted to hospitals who have livestock contact.
Whether routine antibiotic treatment of livestock may increase the prevalence of MRSA in livestock is unknown at this time. However, it is reasonable to believe that the farm practice of “prophylactic” antibiotic administration may facilitate the production and spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria, and there is no reason to believe that MRSA cannot be among these bacteria.
There may be a conflict of interest between the antibiotic manufacturers and public health. Manufacturers of cheap generics make money selling livestock supplements. The spread of antibiotic-resistent bacteria to humans may require the administration of expensive patented antibiotics.
Rage,
You do know the difference between micro and macro Evolution don’t you?
I remember the Health Scientists talking about “super bugs” when I was kid. Looks like their predictions were correct.
As a healthcare worker I have contracted MRSA. In the general realm. My doc acted as if were no big deal.
When I worked in the hospital, I actually heard a nurse whose tests came back with MRSA call a patient and tell him they were changing meds, and she didn’t even tell him that it was because he had MRSA.
In motels, jails, basically anything you come in contact with you have likely been exposed to MRSA. You have blazing idiots out there who think that as long as they’re feeling better, they no longer have to finish out their antibiotics.
I have seen a drastic reduction in doctors prescribing antibiotics. We need an awareness campaign to teach people that 1, they need to know if they have MRSA. (for the dumb nurses who think the patients won’t understand). 2, a protocol strategy for preventing the spread of it in businesses (think Ron Paul who thinks it should be the state’s rights to police their own HA!). and 3. Education that it CAN affect healthy people too. Not just the ill.
I have a bit of personal stake in this fight. I spent 7yrs taking care of a friend with MS, only to lose her to a septic MRSA infection acquired when she had surgery. We fought the infection for months, but finally the bacteria became resistant to Vancomycin, our last-ditch antibiotic and a very nasty drug with severe side effects.At that time, MRSA was a strictly hospital infection, transmitted by healthcare workers and/or equipment. Simple handwashing and sterile procedures kill the germ, but someone was careless. Someone didn’t wash thoroughly between dressing changes, or reused a piece of equipment without sterilizing it completely. We’ll never know who screwed up, but someone did, and she died as a result. Overuse of antibiotics is only part of the reason people get MRSA infections. Carelessness is the other.
Evolution is a fraud. God created this superbug about 6,000 years ago in the same few days along with everything else. God has decided to unleash this illness now as punishment for society’s sins. This infection and any deaths that occur is a direct result of the gay agenda in this country and you will now feel the wrath of the almighty. Resistance is futile, your all powerful, loving God has his own plan for you deviant homos and liberals. The only people left standing will be the true Christian soldiers that put their faith in the bible and its teachings. We tried to tell you to turn away from dangerous scientific knowledge like evolution and solar centricity but you would not listen. The Rapture is coming and I can hardly wait.
Scott,
Mutations are not the same thing as evolution.
I remember in microbiology class of mutation rates and how physical stimuli such as different wavelengths of light can cause mutations.
“This infection and any deaths that occur is a direct result of the gay agenda in this country and you will now feel the wrath of the almighty.”
OMG, John Stone you are STILL insane. But please, say hey to aaron.
they’re all related Kansas, duh. Scott, that was hillarious, thanks.
Jed, it could have come from anywhere. You can be incredibly careful and still end up with MRSA.
Well how long ya out for there “scott”?
Oh gees- here we go again. You can file this “scare” along with space alien invasions, astroids hitting Earth, Swine Flu, Bird Flu and Global Warming!
Let’s see last month bridge collapsed on I35 and ten people died. The cry was instant: Increase taxes and fund immediate bridge repairs nationwide!
This month: New bugs kill one.
For heaven’s sake call out the Marines!
Rage,
You do know the difference between micro and macro Evolution don’t you?
Posted by: Nathan | October 17, 2007 at 03:07 PM
Sigh. . .it’s the same principle, Nathan. The distinction between small changes over short times and large changes over long times–as if they relied on different scientific principles–is really quite arbitrary. There’s no reason to put in a restriction–an artificial wall–where no meaningful one actually exists.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html
“”"”What’s wrong with Wichita?”
Let’s see, four years getting a BA/BS, four years of medical school/internship, then graduates with huge education loans, picks a city where there is money for a practise AND a nice place to live.
After all that time in school, would you pick a sleepy little midwestern town?”"”
There are many advantages to living in a small city such as Wichita. Sure it does not have the excitement, entertainment or culture of NYC, LA, Chicago or Vegas but it offers things like a much lower cost of living, fairly low crime rates, good schools and, for a professional, a much better chance of civic lnvolvement and civic leadership. If you are a professional specialist in a place like Wichita, you are one of a few and will be better known and respected in the community- not to mention your name in the paper and on TV far more often than in a larger city. A heart specialist in Wichita is one of only a few. A heart specialist in NYC is one of hundreds.
Those of you who think this in overblown “scare”: the fact is that ALL of the current antibiotics have drug-resistant strains out there.
It’s only a matter of time before the current antibiotics will be useless.
End of the world? Naw. I suppose an epidemic or two (like, say, the 1918 H5N1 outbreak), could help cut down on the excess population . . .
No small matter to be sure Rage..
Probably some serious reconsideration of prescrition antibioatics is in order.
Another side to this though…
Even as the germs get MORE resistant? We are getting less so.
Anti bacterial soap, wipes, cleaners etc etc.
We are creating a population that can’t live outside a cleanroom!
“Anti bacterial soap, wipes, cleaners etc etc.
We are creating a population that can’t live outside a cleanroom!”
. . .and in addition to that, by killing off the more benign microbes in a such a fashion, we are ensuring that the hardiest–and ultimately nastiest–survive.
I always wash my hands, but I never use anti-bacterials.
Heres some grim statistics, but its some what interesting. About 155,000 people die every day, world wide. Or about 56 million a year.About 74 million babies are born every year world wide.
Leading causes of death in America.1. heart disease2. cancer3.Medical malpractice4.micellanous (sids, murder, suicide, etc. etc.)5.stroke6.lung diseases7. Accidents (traffic, freak mishaps etc.)8.Diabetes9.alzheimers10.kidney disease
Smoking and bad diet are the leading casuses of death, ironically, medical malpractice is the next.
First of all, I have never smoked but I have steamed a few times.
All diet is bad diet. I have been on several diets that I lost my temper but have been on very few that I actually lost weight.
And the last staff infection we had was contacted at an office party. Durned near took out half our workers! I don’t know if it was resistant to antibiotics but it sure ruined production for a week.
P-Mom,”Jed, it could have come from anywhere. You can be incredibly careful and still end up with MRSA.”
True now, but at the time (1997) MRSA was strictly a hospital infection, and nobody was taking the extreme measures to test for and isolate hospital infections that are currently in place. If they had, it might not be showing up everywhere now.
Seems like a slow news day when the media jumps on a bug that’s been around for > 40 years. Yep…….that’s right. VRSA is much more note-worthy.
Y’know the tough staph came in on a comet. Maybe we oughta ask the Ruskies what bacterialphage they’ve been using to combat it these last few decades?