Infectious Diseases

With MRSA being so prevalent in the news lately, many people are worried about coming down with the disease. Unfortunately, almost anyone can be at risk, since MRSA has made its way out of hospitals and into the general population. If you are in one of the high risk groups for contacting MRSA, here is a look at the symptoms you should look out for.

However, there are not just one or two symptoms that definitively define MRSA. The symptoms of MRSA can vary greatly depending on where in the body the infection occurs. This is why it is so important to see your primary care physician if you suspect an infection.

Infection Sites

Common sites of MRSA infections include:

• Surgical wounds from recent surgeries
• Burns (especially second and third degree burns)
• Catheter sites from both urinary and blood catheters
• The eyes
• The skin
• In the blood

Staph infections can have a variety of treatments, depending on the severity and location of the infection. MRSA, a form of staph infection that is resistant to many antibiotics, can be a little more difficult to treat. Here is a look at some of the options you have to treat staph and MRSA infections.

Keeping the area clean is an important part of curing staph infections. Antibiotic soaps and warm, moist compresses a few times of day can help to clean the wound out.

Severe infections may require antibiotics. If the staph infection is MRSA, your doctor may need to do a culture to determine which antibiotic will be most effective in treating your infection.

Intravenous Antibiotics

In the most serious cases, IV antibiotics may need to be administered. These IV antibiotics are also used for staph infections of the face. If the staph infection is on an internal organ, surgery may be required to treat it.

A January 27, 2007 article on about a super bug that kills healthy young adults in 24 hours caught manypeople's attention. The superbug was identified as the bacteria called PVL-producing MRSA. This is a highly virulent strain of the Staphylococcus aureus bacteria commonly known as the Staph infection. The Staph infection is resistant to antibiotics and decimates white blood cells and can also cause boils to appear.

When this bacteria gets into an open would it can start the process for necrotizing pneumonia. This type of pneumonia destroys lung tissue. The survival rate for necrotizing pneumonia is only 25%. There have been fatalities from the PVL-MRSA strain in England, Wales, United States, United Kingdom, Australia and in Europe.

What’s a Superbug