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Infection control

Rates of some hospital-acquired infections fall by 50%

Liz Szabo
USA TODAY
A cluster of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria. MRSA can cause skin infections, blood stream infections and pneumonia.

The USA cut the rate of some health care-associated infections by 50% in recent years, but failed to make a dent in rates of other dangerous infections related to inpatient medical treatment.

Americans developed 722,000 infections related to health care in 2011, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Such infections wouldn't have developed if people hadn't gone to a hospital or nursing home. About 75,000 patients with these infections died.

Some of the most dangerous infections are ones that occur in the tubes placed in a large vein in the neck or near the heart in order to administer medicines or fluids or withdraw blood. Rates of these infections fell by 50% from 2008 to 2014, according to the CDC.

Infections in places where surgeons made incisions also fell, including 2% for colon surgery and 17% in operations in which doctors remove the uterus through the abdomen.

Infections of the antibiotic-resistant MRSA fell by 13% from 2011 to 2014, according to the CDC. Infections of C. difficile, which can cause deadly diarrhea, fell by 8% during the same period.

The USA made no progress in preventing catheter-related urinary tract infections, which can develop in the thin tubes inserted into the bladder.

Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria develop genetic mutations that prevent them from being killed by such medicines. That can make infections difficult or impossible to treat, said CDC director Thomas Frieden.

In hospitals where patients stay for a short time, 14% of health care-associated infections were caused by resistant bacteria. In hospitals where patients stay for 30 days or more, 25% of these infections were resistant, a statistic Frieden called "chilling."

Antibiotic resistance "threatens to return us to a time when simple infections could kill," Frieden said.

The risk of antibiotic resistance increases every time doctors prescribe an antibiotic. That's why doctors should use them only when needed and for the shortest amount of time necessary, said Peter Pronovost, director of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins.

Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) caused 453,000 infections among patients in the United States in 2011.
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