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The N.D.s Corner:>
Stay Safe From MRSA in the Hospital
May 17, 2008
From: Askdrteresa
To: Support@feelingoutstanding.com
Sent: 5/17/2008 12:10:55 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subj: Fwd: One Way to Predict if You'll Get Cancer
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Dr Teresa Latendress Naturopathic Physician
http://www.drteresa.4t.com
Stay Safe From MRSA in the Hospital
My neighbor, a strapping young dad in his 30's, recently
entered the hospital for a routine procedure... and almost
died. His hand -- the site of a simple intravenous (IV)
line insertion -- became infected with
methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which
soon traveled up his whole arm. Resistant to common
antibiotics, this strain of Staph can be extremely
difficult to treat. Doctors opened his arm to drain the
infection, bombarded him with assorted drugs, and he
remained in the hospital for several weeks. Luckily, he
recovered and is back home playing with his kids. But the
outcome is not always happy for those infected with MRSA,
especially if their health was already in some way
compromised.
Unfortunately, MRSA may be more common even than current
news reports and studies indicate. For example, MRSA was
estimated to be associated with more than 94,000 invasive
infections and nearly 19,000 deaths in the US in 2005,
according to the October 17, 2007, issue of the Journal of
the American Medical Association... but these figures are
now being disputed by health policy expert Betsy McCaughey,
PhD, the former lieutenant governor of New York and the
founder and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection
Deaths, a nonprofit, who says that they should be higher.
She says the statistics only account for one type of MRSA,
the invasive form, which primarily becomes a bloodstream
infection. According to Dr. McCaughey, "This statistic
excludes all post-surgical wound infections, all urinary
tract infections, and most pneumonia's." Her estimate is
that 880,000 patients contract MRSA in a hospital, or 2.4%
of patients. On top of that, community-associated
methicillin-re sistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA), a
type of MRSA acquired outside a hospital setting, is now a
concern in schools and in the community at large,
accounting for 15% of all infections.
How can you protect yourself from this life-threatening
infection? Dr. McCaughey is highly critical of the
precaution guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, saying that the CDC has consistently
underestimated the extent of the problem with MRSA and has
failed to take appropriate steps to help bring it under
control. She believes hospitals should be held to far
higher standards of cleanliness, among other measures.
"Restaurants receive greater scrutiny for cleanliness than
hospitals," she points out.
Dr. McCaughey supports universal MRSA screening as a
standard part of hospital admissions procedure, plus
environmental testing and cleaning for the bacteria as
well. However, a report just published in the Journal of
the American Medical Association did not find evidence of
reduced infection rates in patients screened for MRSA who
were put under special precautions if positive, compared
with those in the control group. Dr. McCaughey is skeptical
of the results. "MRSA screening has been shown to be highly
effective in over 50 studies. Not one study has
demonstrated that MRSA infections can be controlled without
screening. The excessive delays in getting screening test
results back to emergency surgery patients and their
caregivers in the JAMA study could have allowed the germs
to spread and could explain the poor outcome in the study,"
she says. However, it's important to point out that, though
the standard needs to remain as high as it can be, the
truth is it' s virtually impossible to keep any institution
100% free of the bacteria.
http://www.drteresa.4t.com
HOW TO REDUCE THE RISK OF INFECTION
Nonetheless, it is important not to be cavalier about the
risk of MRSA infection and there are steps you can take on
an individual level to reduce your own risk. Let's start
with an understanding of the problem.
Bacteria normally reside on everyone's skin -- and Staph
bacteria can be found on the skin or in the noses of 25% to
30% of the population as part of the community of bacteria
all humans are hosts to, which is in fact necessary for
normal immunity. Staph bacteria only cause infection when
they somehow work their way inside the body -- for example,
through an IV line or catheter or incision, which
especially becomes a problem in individuals with
compromised health or immunity.
In medical environments, including hospitals, people with
MRSA on their skin can leave bacteria on surfaces such as
stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs. These are not
routinely cleaned between patients, even though studies
clearly demonstrate that they are contaminated with
bacteria and can be a route for transmission of the
dangerous ones -- especially in the hospital setting, where
there are many ways this might be able to get inside your
body, including through a urinary tract catheter, a
catheter anywhere in the body, a surgical incision or other
open wound, or a ventilator.
The first and perhaps most important thing you can do to
protect yourself and your loved ones during visits to
doctors' offices, medical facilities and during hospital
stays are to strengthen your immune system so it can help
your body fight any infectious agents encountered in a
medical environment. (You may recall that I recently
covered this particular topic in depth -- see Daily Health
News, January 17, 2008.)
Dr. McCaughey's organization has a Web site,
www.hospitalinfection.org, where you can read about "15
Steps You Can Take to Reduce Your Risk of a Hospital
Infection." Here are some strategies to protect yourself
from MRSA beyond just bolstering your immune system:
Before a planned hospitalization, ask your doctor to test
you for MRSA. The screening test is a simple nasal or skin
swab. If these bacterial strains are present, steps can be
taken to shield you from infection, such as bathing with
chlorhexidine soap, which will remove the dangerous
bacteria from your skin, and using mupirocin ointment in
your nasal passages.
Always, and especially in a health care setting, practice
good hygiene. Wash your hands frequently with soap and
water or use an alcohol-based hand rub. At the hospital,
speak up and ask that all caregivers clean their hands
before touching or treating you -- they're supposed to do
this, of course, but in truth, compliance is nowhere near
100%.
If you must have an IV, make certain that it's inserted and
removed under clean conditions, and changed every three to
four days. Make sure the area is well cleaned and the
medical technician dons new gloves before giving you any
kind of IV or injection. Again, this should be standard
operating procedure... but it isn't always. Inform your
doctor immediately if any persistent, raised redness
appears at the site of the injection.
Before your doctor uses a stethoscope, blood pressure cuff
or other equipment on you, ask that it be wiped down with
alcohol or otherwise sterilized. Even though they are often
contaminated with bacteria, caregivers seldom clean devices
in between patients.
Ask your doctor to keep you warm during an operation.
Research shows that people who are kept warm are better
able to resist infection following many types of surgery.
Ask your doctor to monitor your glucose levels during and
after surgery (especially heart surgery). When blood sugar
is well controlled, the body more easily fights infection.
Learn more about MRSA at Dr. McCaughey's Web site,
www.hospitalinfection.org.
Source(s):
Betsy McCaughey, PhD, the former lieutenant governor of New
York and the founder and chairman of the Committee to
Reduce Infection Deaths, a nonprofit.
www.drteresa.4t.com
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