The weekly testing for MRSA, the most common superbug, detected more than half of young patients who were carrying the germ (54 percent, or one and a half times as many) than were detected through routine testing, which missed 35 percent of those with MRSA. Results for detecting VRE, a lesser known but still common superbug, were six times higher with weekly testing than with routine testing, which missed 82 percent of those with VRE. Like most bacteria, hospital superbugs are picked up through direct contact, by touching someone or a surface with it.
"The results were quite clear to us: Aggressive patient safety programs should consider testing on admission as standard practice," says study senior author and hospital epidemiologist Trish Perl, M.D. Perl and her team, however, will wait for evidence of improved patient safety before making any national recommendations to government agencies and other hospitals.
Perl is past president of SHEA and will be presenting at the four-day conference, expected to attract 1,200 infectious disease specialists, epidemiologists, nurses and hospital administrators to the city.
"We need to find patients who have these bacteria on them and who, as such, are not only at risk of personal infection, but also pose a serious threat of infection to other patients and hospital staff," she says.
According to Perl, a professor of medicine and pathology at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, patients found to be infected or to be a carrier before infection has set in are placed in isolation for the remainder of their stay. Wound care is done only in designated, confined treatment spaces or separate rooms, and hospital staff must take special precautions between treatments, such as cleaning equipment and furniture with strong disinfectants and wearing disposable gloves, masks and gowns.
"Children are more vulnerable to
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Contact: David March
dmarch1@jhmi.edu
410-955-1534
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
16-Apr-2007