Also, hospital or nursing home patients who have been treated with antibiotics, have wounds or invasive medical devices such as catheters, or have certain procedures like surgery or dialysis are more likely to get an infection. Once a person has MRSA they are at higher risk for getting an infection. People who are healthy and who have not been in the hospital or a nursing home can also get MRSA infections. These community infections usually involve the skin.
There are steps you can take to prevent MRSA infections in the community where you live, work, and play. In addition to being passed to patients directly from unclean hands of healthcare workers or visitors, MRSA can be spread when patients contact contaminated bed linens, bed rails, and medical equipment. Yes, there are antibiotics that can kill MRSA germs. Some types of MRSA infections need surgery to drain infected areas.
Your healthcare provider will determine which treatments are best for you. It is important to get care for MRSA infections early. If left untreated, MRSA can quickly spread throughout the body and cause life-threatening problems including sepsis. To decrease the chance of getting MRSA your family and friends should:. Section Navigation. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Syndicate.
Recently, however, a few strains of Staphylococcus aureus have even developed some degree of resistance to vancomycin. The vancomycin-resistant strains may be more difficult to treat. Newer antibiotics are being developed to address this problem.
Careful hand washing is the single most effective way to control spread of MRSA. Health care workers should wash their hands after contact with each patient.
If the patient is known to have an MRSA infection, the health care worker should wear disposable gloves. Depending on the type of contact, a gown should also be worn. Patients must also wash their hands to avoid spreading the bacteria to others. Now there are varieties of MRSA that occur in nonhospital settings.
These infections typically affect the skin of otherwise healthy individuals — such as student athletes. An MRSA skin infection looks like a boil, pimple or spider bite that may be:. These infections most commonly occur at sites where the skin has been broken by cuts or scrapes, or on areas of the skin covered by hair, such as the:.
Athletic equipment and locker rooms should be regularly cleaned and disinfected. There's no evidence that spraying or fogging rooms or surfaces with disinfectant works any better than just focusing on frequently touched surfaces — such as wrestling mats, weight training equipment and locker room benches.
To help prevent the spread of MRSA infections:. Cover the infected area with a clean, dry bandage. Then, go see your doctor. Don't try to treat a skin infection yourself. It's hard to tell the difference between a skin infection caused by MRSA and a skin infection caused by another type of bacteria. Your doctor can order laboratory tests to determine what kind of bacterial infection you have.
Minor MRSA skin infections usually heal after being drained by your doctor. If the infection doesn't heal well or gets worse, your doctor may prescribe antibiotics that are still effective against MRSA. If the infection is severe, you may need to be hospitalized. In rare cases, MRSA infections can become life-threatening. While your skin infection is healing, keep it covered with a clean, dry bandage at all times.
To avoid spreading MRSA to others, wash your hands often, especially after changing your bandage or touching the infection. Don't share clothing, towels or hygiene products with anyone else. PMID Reduced susceptibility to chlorhexidine among extremely-drug-resistant strains of Klebsiella pneumoniae. J Hosp Infect ;81 1 — Sequential evolution of virulence and resistance during clonal spread of community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
Am J Infect Control ;44 12 — Epub 29 Jun Clinical Trails. Health care spending in the United States and other high-income countries. The growing executive-physician wage gap in major US nonprofit hospitals and burden of nonclinical workers on the US healthcare system.
Clin Orthop Relat Res ; 10 — McCarthy M. The New York times. Hospitals know how to reduce or stop staph infections. So why are thousands still dying? Download references. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. Correspondence to Kevin T.
Kevin Kavanagh has received partial conference attendance and meeting support from the U. He has a first degree relative, who is employed by a state university, and is involved with the development of cancer chemotherapeutic and diagnostic agents. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
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Search all BMC articles Search. Download PDF. Abstract Data released by the U. Research integrity issues with underlying health policy research In the United States, hand hygiene has been one of the cornerstones of infectious disease policy. Interventions which currently are receiving emphasis in the United States Despite the mounting evidence for the need for pathogen-specific targeted interventions, many institutions in the United States continued to exclusively implement non-specific global interventions.
These have included: 1. Common excuses for the high rates of hospital-onset MRSA in the United States There are a number of common excuses which are used to justify the high rates of hospital-onset MRSA and the inertia in implementing protocols to lower infections.
Full size image. Conclusion In the face of an emerging epidemic, medicine must not stagnate by waiting for the performance of randomized controlled trials RCT. Availability of data and materials Data can be downloaded from Hospital Compare datasets. References 1. Acknowledgements Not applicable. Funding None. Kavanagh Authors Kevin T. Kavanagh View author publications. Ethics declarations Ethics approval and consent to participate Not applicable.
Consent for publication Not applicable. Competing interests Dr. About this article. Cite this article Kavanagh, K. Copy to clipboard. Contact us Submission enquiries: Access here and click Contact Us General enquiries: info biomedcentral.
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