Rise of Drug-Resistant Infections Increases Focus on Prevention
The New York Times is reporting on fearsome and deadly new bacterial infections that are highly resistant to drugs and antibiotics. While most talk of hospital infections centers around the dreaded MRSA methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, new drug-resistant varieties are quickly emerging, posing a serious threat to patients and a challenge to doctors.
Every year, MRSA infections leave thousands of patients seriously ill, and kill several others. As dangerous as these infections are, these organisms do respond to antibiotic therapy. What's worrying doctors across the country is the development of new strains of bacteria that are even more deadly because they're resistant to the antibiotics currently being used. According to the figures, the numbers of people being killed by these drug-resistant bacterial infections possibly runs into the tens of thousands of patients annually.
One such organism is Acinetobacter baumannii. Acinetobacter baumannii and other such drug-resistant bacteria belong to a group called Gram Negative bacteria. The name comes from their negative reaction to the Gram stain test. Yet another Gram negative organism is Klebsiella pneumoniae. This organism seems to thrive especially well in the crowded hospitals of New York.
These so-called super germs are now spreading across the world. Studies into injury and fatality rates from Gram-negative bacterial infections are not sophisticated enough for us to know how many people are killed from these infections every year. To be honest, MRSA kills more people than any other kind of orgasm. MRSA also continues to be more dangerous because it can spread even outside the hospital. In contrast, gram-negative bacteria attack people who have a weakened immune system, and only thrive in a hospital setting. These germs breed on surfaces in a hospital, and are introduced into the body through open cuts and contaminated medical products, like catheters.
Because treatment is so difficult and available antibiotics have a high risk of leaving patients with kidney damage, the best cure for these infections is prevention. This makes it all the more necessary that hospitals take up their infection control programs on a war footing.
The Indiana medical malpractice lawyers at Theodoros & Rooth represent persons injured because of surgical errors, emergency room errors, failure to diagnose , misdiagnoses, and other forms of medical negligence.
