Finding Balance With MRSA

MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) is an infection caused by the microbe Staphylococcus aureus “staph”.

What makes MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) different from a regular staph infection is that a staph infection is usually treated with Methicillin, and particular strains of staph have built up a resistance against that drug. Therefore, treatment with Methicillin (an antibiotic) does not cure the infection. Thus, the staph infection is given the title of MRSA.

Now one of the known super-bugs of our time, MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) has claimed approximately 20,000 lives in the United States alone (2012 data).

Due to the resistance that MRSA has to the strong antibiotic Methicillin, patients diagnosed with MRSA are almost two times as likely to die compared to people with a regular staph infection.

A recent estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released information estimating that nearly 370,000 hospitalizations have been attributed to MRSA cases here in the United States, in 2012 alone.

Due to the alarming spread of MRSA infections here in the United States, the healthcare industry has estimated that it costs around 4.5 billion to treat hospitalizations associated with MRSA.