Battling the Superbug
By: Katharine Greider; Source: AARP Bulletin Date Posted: 2007-01-03 14:31:00-05:00
By Katharine Greider
January 2007
Every patient hospitalized in the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System has a nasal swab taken at least twice: once on admission, once at discharge, to test for the increasingly prevalent drug-resistant bug methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus—or MRSA.
It's a big undertaking based on a simple idea: In order to squelch the spread of a dangerous pathogen, you've got to find out where it lives. Doctors and nurses typically take special precautions when treating patients with a known MRSA infection. They wear gowns, for example, and disposable gloves. But some infection-control specialists argue there's a huge chink in this armor: Symptom-free carriers of MRSA who work in hospitals often go unidentified, spreading the lethal germ via lab coats, bed rails, blood pressure cuffs, stethoscopes, computer keyboards—and mostly by their unclean hands.
Identifying, isolating and treating MRSA carriers is standard procedure in Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands, countries that have managed to suppress MRSA's spread almost entirely.
And it seems to be working in Pittsburgh, too. Four years ago, the Veterans Affairs hospital there had about 20 MRSA infections a year. Now it has one or two. Even the hospital's chief of staff, Rajiv Jain, M.D., admits to being surprised at the success. "All the experts told us it could not be done," he says. Now he's heading a national effort to roll out screening programs throughout the VA system, beginning with 17 hospitals.
But the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has thus far declined to recommend MRSA screening as standard procedure for non-VA hospitals. Patient advocates criticized CDC guidelines issued in October that suggested screening tests only "in some settings, especially if other control measures have been ineffective."
The CDC could reconsider. The agency was key in launching the VA pilot program, Jain says, and is "looking at our experience very closely."
Additional Related Links
How You Can Avoid Getting Infected (January 2007)
Making Surgery Safer, One Patient at a Time (October 2006)
Fatal Mistakes (November 2004)
Health Care Safety: What to Look For (November 2004)
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