CHICAGO — A government report says the rate of dangerous staph infections has dropped sharply in hospital intensive-care units, a rare encouraging sign about a hard-to-treat “superbug.”
The report involving nearly 600 hospitals across the United States — including Colorado — is the largest to document a long-term decline in the level of IV tube-related infections of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, a deadly drug-resistant staph germ.
The rate of MRSA bloodstream infections connected with intravenous tubes fell almost 50 percent between 1997 and 2007. The decline occurred at most types of intensive-care units that reported these infections to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the study period.
“We may actually be starting to get a toehold on” these dangerous germs, said Dr. Buddy Creech, a Vanderbilt University infectious disease specialist not involved in the research. “That’s encouraging.”
In 1997, there were an estimated 43 MRSA infections for every 100,000 intensive-care patients who spent a day hooked up to one of the these IV tubes. By 2007, that number dropped to just 21.
The study authors say the results are probably a sign that doctors and nurses are working harder at prevention efforts. That includes hand-washing, instrument sterilization and other measures.
MRSA bacteria can’t be treated with common antibiotics, and they cause more than 90,000 serious infections and more than 18,000 deaths nationwide each year.
The research appears in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association. An editorial in the journal calls the report evidence of substantial, but also limited, progress.
For example, despite the overall drop in incidence, MRSA became a more common cause of the ICU infections examined than more easily treated staph germs. Also, the study addresses only infections in intensive-care units; it’s unclear whether MRSA infections have declined in other hospital settings, said editorial author Dr. Michael William Climo, an infectious-disease specialist at Hunter Holmes McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Richmond, Va.
