Posted on 09/30/2004 3:06:21 PM PDT by neverdem
The Associated Press
Flesh-eating bacteria cases, fatal pneumonia and life-threatening heart infections suddenly are popping up around the country, striking healthy people and stunning their doctors. The cause? Staph, a bacteria better known for causing skin boils easily treated with standard antibiotic pills.
No more, say infectious disease experts, who increasingly are seeing these "super bugs" -- strains of Staphylococcus aureus unfazed by the entire penicillin family and other first-line drugs.
Until a few years ago, these drug-resistant infections were unheard of except in hospital patients, prison inmates and the chronically ill. Now, resistant strains are infecting healthy children, athletes and others with no connection to a hospital.
"This is a new bug," said Dr. John Bartlett, who heads the committee on antibiotic resistance at the Infectious Diseases Society of America. "It's a different strain than in the hospital ... more dangerous than other staph.
"Primary care physicians and ER doctors, they don't all know [about this] and should," he said.
Bartlett, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, treated three young Baltimore area women this year who got pneumonia from this community-acquired resistant staph. All had to be put on breathing machines, and one died, he said.
The infections will be a hot topic at the society's annual meeting this week in Boston. The society has been warning that drug companies are not developing enough new antibiotics to avert a crisis.
Among the case reports to be discussed:
* In Los Angeles, doctors at UCLA Medical Center treated 14 people with necrotizing fasciitis, informally known as "flesh-eating bacteria," over a 14-month stretch through April. Three needed reconstructive surgery; 10 spent time in intensive care.
"This is about as serious an infectious disease emergency as you can get," Dr. Loren G. Miller said. "We don't know how these people got the infection -- there doesn't seem to be a common thread."
* In Corpus Christi, Texas, doctors at Driscoll Children's Hospital saw fewer than 10 cases a year of community-acquired resistant staph infections in the 1990s, then saw 459 in 2003, with 90 percent in healthy children. A few developed life-threatening lung and heart infections or toxic shock syndrome.
* A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study shows another new twist: The resistant staph strain caused pneumonia in 17 people, killing five, during flu season last year.
My big problem with that is you are making the rest room a big mess for the next person. All those paper towels all over the floor are disgusting. I am one of those people who takes the time to use another paper towel and pick up the ones you've dropped. Throwing the germs on the floor is not an answer, plus if you've ever had to clean a bathroom after a group of people have been in there, you would appreciate people not throwing paper towels on the floor. Maybe you should invest in long sleeves.
First, nurses don't prescribe medications (unless they are a nurse practitioner, and even then it is under the supervision of a physician). Second, upon my completion of RN school 15+ years ago, I distinctly remember being VERY well aware of drug-resistant germs (most nurses are compulsive when it comes to preventing nosocomial infections; it's ingrained into us at nursing school). 3. The reason people get antibiotics for colds is because it's much easier for the doc to write out the script, than it is for that doc to put up the brick wall, and field the daily phone calls from that patient until he/she receives their antibiotic. It's certainly not the right thing to do, it's just the easiest. I don't agree with it, given the increasing incidence of drug-resistant bugs, but that's the way it is in the real world.
I have a friend who almost died of M.R.S.A. earlier this year after a routine colonoscopy.
--I'm 63, by the way---
It wasn't until after I sent my post that I realised you noted your post as sarcasm.
Wish I was 63 again---God,time goes by quickly,doesn't it?
---actually, this approach to middle age isn't as bad as I thought it would be at twenty----
Good attitude---LOL
Darlin',
Keep in mind, one day too, you will be old, and a geezer.
There is only one way to avoid it ;)
----yep---but I'm not going to sit around the senior center damning the drug companies for expecting payment for the stuff that's keeping me alive----
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