Patients ‘Bringing MRSA into Hospital’

A QUARTER of serious cases of MRSA in hospitals are bringing the bug in with them, researchers said today.

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

Now 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 and Churchill Hospitals, which operate together as one teaching hospital, and the Horton Hospital in 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 per cent of total MSSA cases and about 25 per cent 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 per cent in 1997 and 1998 to 26 per cent in 2003.

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