MRSA Topic

Recent estimates put the cost of MRSA infections in US hospitals between $3.2 billion and $4.2 billion each year¹. Individual costs associated with treating an MRSA or S. aureus infection range from a few thousand dollars for minor cases up to well over $100,000 for complicated post-surgical infections.² With these numbers, you would think its a no-brainer for hospitals to institute rigorous MRSA control procedures to keep the infection rate at a minimum. The problem is that there are costs associated with adopting MRSA surveillance and treatment procedures. Thus, and especially in a largely privatized healthcare environment such as the US, it unfortunately comes down to the issue of return on investment. Put simply: do the costs saved by preventing “x” number of infections justify the expenditures necessary to carry out the prevention program? Read More

So why all the fuss about MRSA now? People have been contracting bacterial infections as long as there have been people, and the miraculous discovery of antibiotics goes way back to work done in the 1920’s and even earlier. Presumably bacteria have always had the ability to circumvent man’s defenses and to adapt to the remedies we use against them? Read More