Drug-resistant Staph Infections Prevail at Hospitals

Methicilin-resistant stapholococcus aureus. Fortunately it has an acronym - MRSA.

The bacteria CAN be harmless.

Many of us carry it, typically in our noses.

But the MRSA strain can be deadly when it moves into the bloodstream.

The PROBLEM is that the bug is RESISTANT to MOST antibiotics.

And some strains are mutating to resist the few drugs known to be effective.

Consequently, says New Hampshire epidemiologist Jose Monetero, treatment is complicated.

“There is not such a thing as a recipe that fits all. It’s not as though we can tell you to go to your doctor and get this antibiotic.”

A new study shows that MEN, SENIORS, AND people who have stayed in hospitals or nursing homes are more likely to carry the bug.

And if you carry that bug, you can infect yourself or someone else….very easily

For example, the bacteria can move from person to person via standard medical tools – like needles and stethoscopes.

It can also easily migrate from a doctor’s hand or a nurses sleeve to a patient – or FROM a patient's sheets to a doctor or nurse.

And Montero says with that infections can be anything from a simple rashe to severe illness.

Montero: “The most frequent things you see are pneumonia or septicemia – a generalized infection. In some people you may develop because of the septic picture with several damage to targeted organs. May be your kidneys or may be your liver it will be different depending on where infection is localized…

And he says that if everyone would wash their hands properly - rates would go down.

But even at hospitals, hand washing rules are followed only 40% of the time.

As you would expect - those who are frail are at higher risk for severe problems.

Beth Reimer – from Plainfield, Illinois knows from personal experience just how serious this problem is.

Reimer entered Edwards Hospital in Naperville, Illinois to deliver her twins - Madeline and Luke – in June of 2005.

The twins were premature.

A few weeks after they came home, one of them - Madeline - became ill with a respiratory illness -- caused by MRSA.

Reimer says doctors tried many antibiotics, but Madeline died about six weeks after birth.

REIMER: When we had the babies we knew we had to take special precautions to keep them safe from germs and from viruses. And to find out she had contracted something that I had no idea or knowledge about. It was scary and it was hard because there was nothing I could do. I just sat back and watched her deteriorate before my eyes. It was very difficult, very hard.”

No one knows whether Madeline picked up MRSA at the hospital - or whether the mom, Beth Reimer carried it in.

But Reimer wonders why, if MRSA is such a large problem, hospitals don't test all patients for it.

BETH: “A $27 dollar test could have been done and my daughter possibly could have lived.”

The Centers for Disease Control doesn’t recommend universal testing.

They say it would be too expensive.

But hospitals in The Netherlands have been testing all patients at the door and have nearly eradicated MRSA from those settings.

In fact, Dutch hospitals treat American patients as high risk due to our high rates of MRSA.

A few hospitals in the U.S. have tried screening at various levels.

All have seen rates drop.

Evanston Northewestern Healthcare in Evanston, Illinois uses a Dutch-like system of testing.

And MRSA rates dropped by half.

Other hospitals have dropped rates by as much as 90% in intensive care units.

Linda Caine is the Infection Control Director at Eliot Hospital in Manchester.

She agrees that universal testing would be worthwhile – but plans to begin by testing high risk patients at Eliot.

“I don’t look at the money – I look at preventing infections in patients and the staff. That’s my focus.”

To that end, Caine has been keeping a list of patients who've shown symptoms of MRSA infections at Eliot.

So far that list includes 1500 names.

That's just one hospital.

And on average, treating a MRSA infection costs a hospital about $35,000 per patient.

And that doesn't include possible lawsuits.

Officials at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare figured they've saved over a million dollars in their first year screening alone.

In New Hampshire, a group of infection control professionals are working with the state health department to reduce rates here.

Eliot's Linda Caine helps lead that group.

MRSA carriers Can spread the bug to multiple facils SO caines gropu hopes to see a statewide paln in place to control it and other germs.“We go from one facility to another then to a nursing home and to rehab then to another hospital out of state and then we go home. And where did MRSA go – everyplace I just said.”

So how can you find out about your local hospital’s MRSA rate?

Well, you can’t.

Not yet anyway.

Lisa McGiffert is a project director at Consumers Union – the organization that publishes Consumer Reports.

She heads a national project calling for public disclosure of MRSA infections at hospitals.

McGiffert is also pushing for surveillance of patients.

McGiffert: CDC has documented how this works for hospitals to follow, but unfortunately the CDC guidelines do not even encourage hospitals to use active surveillance. They encourage hospitals to only use them if they’ve identified a problem with MRSA.”

New Hampshire has joined more than a dozen other states in requiring hospitals to report their infections to the public.

But so far, New Hampshire’s law remains unfunded….

For NHR News, I’m Dianne Finch