Oct. 11--It has long be a concern that a person can contract a staph infection in the hospital, but not so common is the knowledge that staph is prevalent in the community and a person can contract it anywhere.
"A lot of people already have it. It's colonized but has not surfaced. They can still transfer it and it can still surface," said Donna Davis, director of the emergency room at Sierra View District Hospital.
The worst form that is out there is Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, called MRSA or Super bug. It is a type of staph bacteria that is resistant to many antibiotics.
MRSA can surface in the matter of a few hours and most people mistake it for a spider bite. It is highly contagious. It is resistant to methicillin and other more common antibiotics such as oxacillin, penicillin and amoxicillin.
However, health officials are not signaling a big alarm. They just want people to be aware it is out there and they need to immediately have bad infections treated.
"I don't think it's worse than it has been. We're seeing it less, but screening a lot more," said Davis.
Sierra View screened 203 patients for MRSA last year, but many of those are routinely screened because of other risk factors. That's out of 40,000 ER visits.
Monte Reyes of Porterville is one of the few who actually had the staph. He has been treated and back at work, but he never imagined he would be a victim of staph. To this day, he does not know how or where he contracted the staph.
In the community, most MRSA infections are skin infections, such as in the case of Reyes. They are most common on the face, back and legs. They begin as a small sore, but enlarge rapidly. They can be very painful.
According to the Center for Disease Control, more severe or potentially life-threatening MRSA infections occur most frequently among patients in healthcare settings, but those numbers are dropping. Hospitals are doing a better job of controlling staph.
In 2010, results from a CDC study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that invasive (life-threatening) MRSA infections in healthcare settings declined 28 percent from 2005 through 2008.
Betty Jones, Infection Prevention director for the hospital, said staph has been around as long as mankind. She said "resistant staph showed up (in the U.S.) in the 1990s."
Staph has no boundaries and while people in certain settings, such as convalescent homes are more at risk, staph does not discriminate -- it will attack anyone.
Davis said the overuse of antibiotics is the reason some staph is resistant to treatment
She also said the hospital sees more patients with staph that is not resistant, than with MRSA, but that all is treatable. It just sometimes takes time to determine the best course of treatment.
"If you catch it in time it is treatable. A good percentage of the time we treat them and release them," said Jones.
When a person shows up at the ER with a bad infection or what they think is a spider bite, doctors first look at it being staph.
"What is the worst case scenario and we work down from there," said Davis, adding a culture is taken to determine if it is staph.
While most cases are external, if a person gets it internally, it is much more difficult to treat and it takes longer for a person to recover.
"If you don't treat it, it can grow and you'll become septic," said Jones. However, she said, "You do hear of people dying from it so it definitely needs to be treated."
Prevention
No. 1, wash your hands regularly, said ER nurse Eileen Paul.
MRSA can live up to 90 days in the open, said Jones, and people reportedly touch their face up to 1,000 times a day.
One preventive measure is to keep a wound covered and clean. That serves to both keep a person from spreading staph if they have it, or contracting it if they don't.
Paul said besides washing your own hands, people need to be sure others are also washing their hands, especially their care providers.
"Just be aware of your surroundings and practice good hygiene, Also, the health care providers said, people should resist wanting an antibiotic for everything.
"If it is a virus, an antibiotic will not help," said Jones.
The less a person uses antibiotics, the less resistant they are when an antibiotic is necessary.
How to Prevent MRSA
- Keep your hands clean by washing thoroughly with soap and water or using an alcohol-based hand rub.
- Keep cuts and scrapes clean and covered with a bandage until healed.
- Avoid contact with other people's wounds or bandages.
- Avoid sharing personal items such as towels or razors.
Source: Center for Disease Control
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