MRSA update

Much to my surprise, I arrived at work this morning to find a fax from our local reference lab. It is entitled "IDEXX Continues to Identify Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococci on Routine Cultures and Offers MRSA Screen for Healthy Pets."

Now, I think that screening on healthy pets is more a marketing issue based on a suspicion, but I can't argue their reasons. Here's a couple of excerpts that are interesting:

"...a recent study in a tertiary referral center revealed that 35% of S. aureus isolates, 17% of S. intermedius isolates and 40% of S. schleiferi isolates in dogs and cats were methicillin resistant..."

"A follow-up study collected cultures from 50 healthy dogs and 59 dogs with inflammatory skin disease. MR staphylococci were isolated from 4% of clinically healthy dogs and 10% with inflammatory skin disease."

"Symptomatic MRSA infections in veterinary patients are rare and, in most cases, suspected to be the result of reverse zoonosis from infected humans."

In other words, MRSA is becoming more common in veterinary patients, ESPECIALLY those treated for chronic wounds, lung infections, bone infectious, and chronic skin disease. Most importantly, this means that all of these infections are going to be resistant to about two thirds of the drugs I have on the shelf.

This also means that I need to be much more careful handling my patients with suspicious infections. Veterinarians are REALLY bad about not wearing gloves and protecting ourselves. I wash my hands all the time, but don't usually wear gloves. YUCK. Guess I should buy a box of gloves before some poor dog infects me with the funk their owner gave them.

AMH