MRSA Notes

I have mentioned this product really briefly in the past, but they have recently run a PR campaign, reminding me that it certainly bears mentioning once again. StaphAseptic is a wound care product, sold over the counter (and at Drugstore.com, linked above and to the image), and is a gel product designed to kill [...]

My friends at RID are featured in the Spring issue of Ms. magazine. Here is an exerpt:

Hospital-acquired infections add an estimated $30.5 billion to the nation’s annual health-care tab in hospital costs alone…’These infections are often transmitted by touch,’ McCaughey said. ‘RID has shown how deadly poor housekeeping can be in hospitals.’ ”
”McCaughey and [...]

Congratulations to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center for receiving the Qualis Health Award of Excellence for leading the way in hospital infection prevention. They have made a hospital wide effort to reduce MRSA in their facility by extremely good handwashing by the staff, screening patients and using isolation techniques to control MRSA, and it [...]

This program has been in place in the adult wards, but now children admitted to the pediatric wards at John’s Hopkins will be screened for MRSA and VRE (Vancomycin-resistant Enterococci). They conducted a study that reinforced the idea:

In a study of 330 patients that lasted four months, weekly testing found 54 percent of patients [...]

Results from a survey of 364 certified U.S. athletic trainers (presented at the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America) revealed that 53% of them had treated MRSA in the atheletes under their care:

Of the infections treated: 86 percent were in males and 35 percent were in females; 65 percent were in football players; 21 percent [...]

Interestingly enough, I recently had a great conversation with another blogger (during a blogger meetup while I was in Toronto last week) about LASIK (Laser-Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis) surgery - this is the laser surgery that is so popular now for vision correction. This is something that I have been hesitant about [...]

I received an email from Ms. Muller the other day - she is very concerned about MRSA, and has seen the ugly side of prosthetics first hand, and has a lawsuit going against her surgeon and the hospital involved.
She had a double mastectomy, and during one of her reconstructive surgeries, to put expanders in to [...]

Great news in Illinois - from Jeanine Thomas, founder of the MRSA Survivors Network. She has been working so hard for hospital disclosure of MRSA rates, and has had a good measure of success this month:

Again this year I initiated MRSA screening and reporting legislation and in the last 3 months have been lobbying [...]

Boston.com is reporting that four Connecticut prisons have reported MRSA outbreaks in recent days: York Correctional Institution in Niantic, Bergin in Storrs and Osborn in Somers. They have notified the Department of Public Health, and we all hope they are working to keep this under control. Interestingly enough, the article reports that some inmates are [...]

This story, from MercuryNews.com, is the story of Laura Debell, a Santa Clara County Jail inmate, who, during a 2 week stay in the jail in 2005, got a small wound on her leg that let to an internal MRSA infection that traveled throughout her body and set up shop in her spine. A [...]