Links 8/5/11

This may be worth a look (excerpt from a new book)

http://inside.org.au/in-the-blood/

"... I am even more disturbed when I learn of a patient who has not been in hospital and who has grown a Staph aureus in their blood that is sensitive to the routine antibiotics. Most doctors who are not specialists in infectious diseases donât get too fussed about this, but it is one of the most serious diagnoses that I can make....
...
... patients who develop Staph aureus bacteraemia have about a 25 per cent chance of being dead within six months (the percentage is higher in many countries) regardless of how healthy or old they are when they get the infection. In other words, if you go into hospital with Staph aureus in your blood you are between three and four times more likely to be dead within the year than if you had arrived with a heart attack. This is a fact little known to doctors â or their patients â and few hospitals have the same protocols in place for the rapid identification and treatment of bloodstream infections as they do for heart attacks....
...
... the vast majority of the responsible strains are sensitive to cheap and safe antibiotics. There is no vaccine available for Staph aureus and there is nothing on the horizon.

The generations who grew up in the pre-antibiotic age knew very well the capacity of bland bacteria to cause terrible sickness. But today respect for the power of bacteria sometimes seems to be limited to those who see the late manifestations of infections."

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