-Caveat Lector-
'Superbugs' soar
Hospitals report rise in multidrug-resistant infections
A new report says samples of the deadly Streptococcus bacteria that resist
not only penicillin but also two other powerful antibiotics jumped 64 per
cent in only three years.
By Robert Bazell
NBC NEWS
Dec. 27 - It's a danger of staggering proportions. Every year, one in 20
hospitalized Americans - 1.8 million people - develop an infection, with
88,000 of them dying. The biggest threat: "supergerms" resistant to
antibiotics.
THE PROBLEM IS growing worse. In a new study out Wednesday, the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that samples of the
deadly Streptococcus bacteria that resist not only penicillin but also two
other powerful antibiotics jumped 64 per cent in only three years.
"The key finding is that we discovered strains that were already
resistant to one drug were picking up additional resistance to other
antibiotics," said the CDC's Dr. Cynthia Whitney. Her research appears in
The New England Journal of Medicine.
In the decades since the first life-saving antibiotic, penicillin, was
discovered, the inappropriate use of antibiotics has yielded these wonder
drugs less and less effective. Read on to learn more about antibiotic
resistance and what you can do to help prevent it.
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Michael Fowler knows the deadly threat all too well. While
hospitalized for arthritis surgery, his wife Dulcey was infected with
antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Doctors struggled in vain to save her.
"Then they told me they could keep her alive on the ventilator for a
while," Fowler recalls, "but she was just sinking and it was kinda
hopeless."
Can anything be done to combat the danger? Dr. Barry Farr, head of
infection control program at the University of Virginia Medical Center in
Charlottesville, says hospitals are more dangerous than ever. With shorter
stays for many procedures mandated by insurance, patients who remain in the
hospitals are often seriously ill, with weakened immune systems.
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"They're very sick," Farr says. "They're at higher risk and the
infection, the bugs, that are around are more of a risk to them."
To cut the risk, UV Medical Center frequently takes cultures from
patients - five to 10 times as often as many similar hospitals. The goal: to
spot antibiotic-resistant germs before they make a patient sick.
"It's only when you have a sort of a surveillance culturing
mechanism, a policy, and are regularly looking for them that you know they'
re there," he explains.
A patient carrying resistant germs is placed in isolation. The
hospital staff, even visitors, must wear gowns and gloves when they visit to
stop the infection from spreading.
How well do the infection control methods work? Officials at UV
surveyed several similar-sized hospitals that don't use this strict method
and found that their rates of antibiotic resistant infection were, on
average, five times higher.
Unfortunately patients are often kept in the dark. Hospitals are not
required to reveal their infection rates. In fact, experts say, many are
actually cutting infection control programs in order to save money.
"A lot of hospitals and long-term care facilities are putting their
heads in the sand regarding infection control," says UV's Michael Osterholm.
And that, experts say, will only increase the deadly threat.
Robert Bazell is the chief science correspondent for NBC News.
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