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Patients Are 'Bringing MRSA into Hospital With Them'

Posted on: Friday, 9 September 2005, 12:00 CDT

A quarter of serious cases of MRSA in hospitals are found in patients who have just arrived from the community, researchers said today.

Rates of the MRSA super-bug have soared in the past decade, with hospital cleanliness largely blamed for helping infection to spread.

Now research has found that in many cases patients are bringing the bug into hospital with them - creating the potential for it to spread further.

A study in the British Medical Journal looked at cases of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and methicillin sensitive Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) bacteraemia in patients arriving at two Oxfordshire hospitals between 1997 and 2003.

These were the John Radcliffe, Radcliffe Infry and Churchill Hospitals, which operate together as one teaching hospital, and the Horton Hospital in nearby Banbury. MRSA can infect many parts of the body but a serious form is when bloodstream infection occurs - bacteraemia.

The researchers, from the University of Oxford, found in the teaching hospitals that patients admitted from the community accounted for 49% of total MSSA cases and about 25% of MRSA bacteraemia cases.

The team also found that the proportion of resistance to the antibiotic methicillin among patients admitted with Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia increased from 14% in 1997 and 1998 to 26% in 2003.

The researchers found that at least 91% of patients who were admitted with MRSA bacteraemia had previously been in hospital, and half had never had MRSA detected before.

They also found that 70% were admitted to emergency medical and surgical services.

Similar results were also seen in the district hospital.

Source: Western Mail

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