MRSA Notes

If you are in central Florida and are the victim of a nosocomial (hospital-acquired) infection (doesn’t have to necessarily be MRSA), someone is looking for a spokesperson. If you will email me at christina@b5media.com, or leave a comment if you are interested, I will get you in touch with the right person.
Awareness, [...]

This is great news for Canada - I sure hope the U.S. will follow suit.

Starting in January, 2008, the Canadian Council on Health Services Accreditation will compel virtually all acute-care hospitals — in addition to those nursing homes and other institutions seeking a stamp of approval — to provide the rates of methicillen-resistant Staphylococcus [...]

Mike, The Mad Biologist , recently attended a Network on Antimicrobial Resistance in Staphylococcus aureus meeting, and came out with some new statistics that you will want to see. Here are a couple of highlights, be sure and read the whole story at Mike’s blog:

43% of all skin infections in the U.S. are the result [...]

One hospital in the UK is using sterile honey and seaweed to prevent MRSA infections in wounds. The honey is directly applied to the wound to seal it, and the seaweed solution is in the dressings and is purported to pull the infection away from the wound.

Doctors at the James Cook University Hospital in [...]

The Washington Times begins its article about HA-MRSA awareness with a bang:

The family thought about suing the hospital, but Maureen Daly said it was not possible because infection was listed as a risk that the family accepted in authorizing Mrs. Daly’s surgery. It is a common predicament faced by those contemplating litigation.
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Here you will find a video from Harlingen, TX Channel 4, about “Mary” and her plastic surgery nightmare - a wound that woudn’t close and the ensuing bladder infection that finally exposed the problem - MRSA. If you have a wound that isn’t acting right, get it checked out. The doctor in “Mary’s” [...]

I received this in an email last week, and it is an eloquent plea from a concerned person (presumably from the UK) for the hospitals to do some basic things that could well help prevent the spread of HA-MRSA in hospitals. I totally agree with him - there are so many small things that [...]

Over the last couple of years, Pennsylvania has had a terrible problem with HA-MRSA, as you can see from my archives on MRSA in Pennsylvania. The infection rate has dropped an astonishing 70% since employing more rigid prevention tactics. They are swabbing all patients for MRSA at admission and discharge, and putting those [...]

I think this is a really interesting story - The Portsmouth Hospital NHS Trust in the UK has apparently been awarded as a Top 40 hospital for their outstanding quality in 2006.
Well, Doug Knight would like to give you the proverbial “rest of the story.” He says:

It makes my blood boil that [...]

As I mentioned pretty briefly last October, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) set new guidelines last year for infection control. One of the suggestions that they made (I say suggestions, because they are unfortunately not regulations that must be adhered to), is that patients use Chlorhexidine Gluconate (CHG) one day prior to surgery. [...]