In the next 6 months you or someone you love will be having major surgery, minor surgery, or a “little procedure” in the doctor’s office. Your children go to school, you play contact sports, your country club or gym has a locker room.
These situations are all breeding grounds for deadly Staph germs and staph infections … which mean someone could die. It’s just that simple. Here are the highlights you need know:
THE SITUATION
1) Staph infections will surpass AIDS in deaths.
2) There is now a new strain of staph infection that is drug-resistant.
3) That deadly “flesh-eating disease” you have heard of, is a Staph Infection. It is now able to move through your bloodstream.
4) Most staph infections take place days after the surgery; many times when you have returned “safely” home.
5) School closes after teen's staph-related death,
Hazards Material Team moves in for sanitizing.
SOLUTIONS
SOLUTIONS
A. All medical professionals touching you …
needs to wash their hands in front of you.
B. Any stethoscope or medical instrument that touches you ...
needs to be cleaned with an alcohol swab.
C. Tell your Governor and legislature that you want full printed disclosure of infection rates of all hospitals and surgical centers.
How can we as consumers make informed choices of our health care if we don't know who's not doing it right? Only then will these facilities make sterilization a priority
THE STORY
More than 90,000 Americans get potentially deadly infections each year from a drug-resistant staph "superbug," the government reported this week in its first overall estimate of invasive disease caused by the germ.
Deaths tied to these infections may exceed those caused by AIDS, said one public health expert commenting on the new study. The report shows just how far one form of the staph germ has spread beyond its traditional hospital setting like schools.The overall incidence rate was about 32 invasive infections per 100,000 people. That's an "astounding" figure, said an editorial in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, which published the study. Most drug-resistant staph cases are mild skin infections. But this study focused on invasive infections -- those that enter the bloodstream or destroy flesh and can turn deadly.
Researchers found that only about one-quarter involved hospitalized patients. However, more than half were in the health care system -- people who had recently had surgery or were on kidney dialysis, for example. Open wounds and exposure to medical equipment are major ways the bug spreads.
In recent years, the resistant germ has become more common in hospitals and it has been spreading through prisons, gyms and locker rooms, and in poor urban neighborhoods.The new study offers the broadest look yet at the pervasiveness of the most severe infections caused by the bug, called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. These bacteria can be carried by healthy people, living on their skin or in their noses. Watch Dr. Sanjay Gupta explain MRSA threat »
An invasive form of the disease is being blamed for the death Monday of a 17-year-old Virginia high school senior. Doctors said the germ had spread to his kidneys, liver, lungs and muscles around his heart. The researchers' estimates are extrapolated from 2005 surveillance data from nine mostly urban regions considered representative of the country. There were 5,287 invasive infections reported that year in people living in those regions, which would translate to an estimated 94,360 cases nationally, the researchers said.
Most cases were life-threatening bloodstream infections. However, about 10 percent involved so-called flesh-eating disease, according to the study led by researchers at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were 988 reported deaths among infected people in the study, for a rate of 6.3 per 100,000. That would translate to 18,650 deaths annually, although the researchers don't know if MRSA was the cause in all cases.
On October 16th in Conneticut, Weston High School officials sent a letter (Read The Full Letter) to students and parents addressing a confirmed case of MRSA, which enters the bloodstream or turns into the so-called flesh-eating disease. If these deaths all were related to staph infections, the total would exceed other better-known causes of death including AIDS _ which killed an estimated 17,011 Americans in 2005 -- said Dr. Elizabeth Bancroft of the Los Angeles County Health Department, the editorial author. THE REPORT
COMING THIS MONDAY , The Risk of Infection Part 2:
We will be reporting on the following: Fibroid Surgery ... a two day hospital stay turns into a 5 month nightmare. ALSO IN THIS STORY:
... as she fights for her life.