4 ms·
On a personal note MRSA is a tough little bug. I got it in the hospital after I broke my ankle and had to get a bunch of screws and a plate installed. They ende
by shrike 17y ago
On a personal note MRSA is a tough little bug. I got it in the hospital after I broke my ankle and had to get a bunch of screws and a plate installed. They ended up removing all of the hardware and keeping me in the hospital for ~90 days on IV Vancomycin. If you develop a resistance to Vancomycin (VRSA - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancomycin-resistant_Staphylococcus_aureus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancomycin-resistant_Staphyloco...) you are pretty much done for.
It is actually pretty frighting; there is one one drug that can fight a serious MRSA infection (Vancomycin). Once we become resistant to that we have to start taking drugs like Linezolid which can kill you faster than the infection. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linezolid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linezolid
If you are headed into the hospital for surgery make sure you talk to all of the doctors about their infection control procedures. Make sure every nurse/orderly/housekeeper and visitor washes their hands before they come into you room.
Sorry about the off topicish comment.
- eru 17y agoWasn't there an interesting article about the use of checklists is hospitals? I remember that they helped the staff to follow all the procedures and shrank infection rates by something like two thirds or so. Edit: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/opinion/30gawande.html http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/opinion/30gawande.html has something about it. But it wasn't the article I sought for.
- gjm11 17y agoPerhaps one of these: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/health/22brod.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/health/22brod.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/25/health/25medicine.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/25/health/25medicine.html EDITED to add: HN discussion of the first of those at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=87167 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=87167 . EDITED again to add: http://www.healthreform.gov/reports/success/michigan.html http://www.healthreform.gov/reports/success/michigan.html has the 2/3 figure in it and has been mentioned in at least one comment on HN.
- eru 17y agoThanks!
- klipt 17y ago"If you develop a resistance to Vancomycin" It isn't you that develops the resistance, it's the bacterium. The problem being that resistant bacteria can be transferred between people...
- shrike 17y agoYour distinction is correct however the speed at which resistance can be developed can make the difference irrelevant. An individual (or the bacterium in an individual) can develop a resistance to a antibiotic in as little as two weeks. In the last month of my treatment the docs were running cultures back to back (every 7 days) to make I (the bacteria with which I was colonized?) wasn't becoming resistant to the Vancomycin. My infection was particularly hard to kill because the surgical screws had carried the infection deep into the bone (osteomyelitis).