HA-MRSA Is A Growing Danger
As a Delaware medical malpractice lawyer, I have strong feelings when relatively healthy clients of mine go into the hospital for routine surgery, and get real sick because of a lapse in infection control. This is a series of articles dealing with hospital acquired MRSA.
A new study reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine shows that sepsis and pneumonia, which are caused by hospital-acquired infections like MRSA, killed 48,000 people in 2006. This is said to be the largest study to date. It was based on 69 million records of patients who were discharged from hospitals in the U.S.
Sepsis is a serious condition caused by a bacterial infection. The body’s immune system goes into overdrive, and blood clots are formed which prevent blood from reaching vital organs. This in turn leads to organ failure, which is so life threatening that 1/3 of the people who get sepsis die from it.
Pneumonia can set in if a disease-causing microbe gets into the lungs and respiratory tract. 11% of the people who develop pneumonia in the hospital die as a result.
According to one of the authors of this study, “Infections that are acquired during the course of a hospital stay cost the United States a staggering amount in terms of lives lost and health care costs.”
For more information, check out:
MRSA Is Preventable
Infections In Hospitals
MRSA- Too Many People Get Sick In Hospitals
