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Category Archives: surveillance

January 22, 2010

MRSA in the journal Science – spread, outbreaks and an argument for active surveillance

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I have a story tonight at CIDRAP about a paper published this evening in the journal Science. To respect fair use and make sure my colleagues get clicks, I just quote the story here — but then I want to talk about why I think it’s such an important study.    A multi-national team of researchers [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in hospitals, infection control, international, nosocomial
January 4, 2010

Warning on ST398: Monitor this now

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Drawing your attention: I have a story up tonight at CIDRAP on a new paper by Dr. Jan Kluytmans, a Dutch physician and microbiologist and one of the lead researchers tracking “pig MRSA,” ST398. (All past stories on ST398 here.) It’s a review paper, which is to say that it summarizes key existing findings rather [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in MRSA, ST 398, animals, food, pigs, veterinary
November 25, 2009

Community MRSA rates rising, and epidemics converging

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A study published Tuesday in Emerging Infectious Diseases makes me happy, despite its grim import, because it confirms something that I will say in SUPERBUG: Community MRSA strains are moving into hospitals, blurring the lines between the two epidemics. The study is by researchers at the excellent Extending the Cure project of Resources for the [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in MRSA, USA 100, USA 300, community, hospitals
June 12, 2009

H1N1 flu and swine surveillance – more relevance for MRSA

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Constant readers, you probably know that yesterday the World Health Organization declared the first flu pandemic in 41 years. I want to point out for you a side issue in the H1N1 story that has great relevance for MRSA, especially ST398. As described in this article I wrote last night for CIDRAP, three medical journal articles [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in H1N1, MRSA, ST 398, animals, veterinary, zoonotic
June 9, 2009

Infections rise, but hospital budgets – and infection control – shrink

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Bad news from the Association of Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC): In a survey of almost 2,000 of their 12,000 members, 41% say that their hospitals’ infection-prevention budgets have been cut due to the down economy. According to the survey, conducted March 2009 and released Tuesday morning: Three-quarters of those whose budgets were cut experienced [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in health policy, hospitals, infection control, medical errors
February 18, 2009

MRSA reductions in ICUs – good news, but qualified

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Constant readers, you will no doubt have seen the overnight news about a paper by CDC authors in the Journal of the American Medical Association, reporting a significant decline in catheter-associated bloodstream infections (known by the uncatchy acronym CLABSIs, and yes, people pronounce it “klab-seez”) in intensive care units. Our results show that the 6 most [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in CDC, MRSA, hospitals, infection control, mandatory reporting, nosocomial
February 6, 2009

Hospital MRSA – taking local action

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If you follow hospital-acquired infections, you know there’s enormous debate nationally over the best strategies to use: “search and destroy” versus targeted surveillance; guidelines from SHEA, APIC, CDC, or elsewhere. The competing assertions and the lack of clarity can be dizzying. Here’s news though of one local area that has decided to cut through the fog. [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in control
November 16, 2008

New newspaper series on HA-MRSA

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The Seattle Times this morning launched an three-day investigative project on incidence of HA-MRSA in Washington State that is worth reading. As readers here already know, MRSA is not a reportable disease, and there are no diagnosis codes that directly correspond to MSRA that make infection or death easily trackable through hospital records or death certificates. [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in colonization, hand hygiene, hospitals, infection control, invasive, medical errors, nosocomial, rapid testing
October 23, 2008

Much new news on hospital-acquired infections

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There’s a ton of new, and conflicting, findings on prevention and detection of hospital-acquired MRSA and other infections. First: Today, in the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, three researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University add to the ferocious debate on “search and destroy,” the colloquial name for active surveillance and testing: that is, checking admitted patients [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in CDC, HICPAC, colonization, control, hand hygiene, health policy, infection control, medical errors, nosocomial
October 7, 2008

Five-fold increase in flu+MRSA deaths in kids

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I have a story up this evening at CIDRAP News about a new paper in the journal Pediatrics that analyzes the incidence of child deaths from pneumonia caused by the combination of MRSA and flu, a sad and scary development that we’ve talked about here, here and here. (NB: CIDRAP News is the original-reporting and news-aggregation [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in CDC, MRSA, colonization, influenza, pandemic flu, pneumonia