Comment by rsync | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rsync | Hacker News Reader

Here's a quote:

"The bacteria made headlines this summer after a CRE strain of Klebsiella pneumoniae battered the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center outside Washington, D.C. Seven died, including a 16-year-old boy. (Hospitals don't reveal victims' names in keeping with medical privacy rules.) But that case was neither the first nor the worst of the CRE attacks."

I'm curious, were new patients notified before admittance that they had a resistant outbreak in their hospital ?

Were existing patients notified that this was happening while they were there ?

I'll bet no, and no.

Another quote:

""We were really frustrated; we hadn't seen anything like this in the literature," says Costi Sifri, the hospital epidemiologist. "The fact that we had different bacteria told us these cases were not related, but the shoe leather epidemiology suggested to us that all these (infections) came from the same patient. ... We realized we might be seeing a mobile genetic event.""

... all the while continuing to admit new patients ...

this isn't anything new... hospital acquired infections (HAIs) are the 4th leading cause of death in the U.S.

nearly 1 in 20 hospitalized patients will acquire a HAI killing 270 people/day

hospitals... scary place

Yes, it is scary. But you forgot to add that give or take half the time doctors don't have the slightest idea of what they're dealing with.

However, the thing gets even hairier when you talk to med students. Most of the one I've talked told me their main reason to learn the craft was the money.

Take good care of yourself, exercise, eat healthy, and don't forget to have sex. Otherwise you're gonna end up in their books as just another entry.

Good advise. If you can at all stay out of a hospital, the better your chances of avoiding these highly selected bugs. It makes sense that feeders are nursing homes or establishments that have some palliative care, as many patients there have somewhat weakened immune systems, whether from age related illnesses or otherwise, and the prescription of antibiotics is, as it is in many other scenarios, excessive. [1]

Stay as strong and as healthy as you can, and condition your immune system as best you can is good advise.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080226092810.ht...

>However, the thing gets even hairier when you talk to med students. Most of the one I've talked told me their main reason to learn the craft was the money.

I lived with a persistent and occasionally debilitating health problem for nearly a decade while being brushed off by clueless doctors.

Finally, I wound up in the ER (again) being served by a guy who actually took the time / had the ability to interpret a blood test.

Not long after that I was having a large, old and thankfully benign tumor removed.

As I understand the issue, a blood test would have revealed this at any point and likely even before the 10 or so years I'd been having symptoms.

Personally, I'm given to thinking that we tend to give folks in medicine too much credit.

Sure, I think it reasonable to expect that someone who has made it through medical school and successfully practices is above average in some regards - relative to the broad population.

However, within the field, I expect that incompetence / apathy is just as prevalent as it is in any other profession.

I'm currently dealing with similar issues. New symptoms started for me this summer, my GP and all the tests and specialists I've seen have no ideas.t

When I do my own research my GP brushes it off. I try to take that in stride -- I do recognize that I am uneducated in the field. But it's disheartening when a specialist comes up with my researched conclusion as one of their top possible explanations.

If you don't tick all their boxes on a list of precisely described symptoms -- which you must self-report -- for a condition that they've looked up moments prior to your appointment you won't get diagnosed correctly unless you are lucky and have managed to find a competent and caring doctor.

Then there are those that claim to have injected themselves with these and then performed surgery on others.....There was a TED talk on this..... scary and reckless stuff.

I used to write code for medical devices. One of the things I learned during my time at the firm was that some hospitals are better than others. Like.. significantly better.

So the question then becomes: How do I, as a consumer of healthcare, tell them apart? Well, patient survival rate and causes of death are never published (hospitals hide behind HIPAA to avoid revealing this info, even in aggregate). But one way we found (empirical & anecdotal evidence, so treat accordingly) is to look down the ward and see if the nurse-call lights flashing for more than a few minutes. If the patients are pushing the bedside button and not getting attention from the care-givers, find yourself another hospital.

Another good way is to see if the staff are frequently washing their hands and cleaning the equipment that can be moved from room to room (the plastics used typically have silver ions in them, but that's only partially effective at killing the wee beasties).

Family involvement is also critical. If you're wonked out on drugs, you really need someone in the room watching the staff to ensure they do things correctly, and that the bill doesn't get padded with goods & services that weren't used in your care.

hospitals... scary place

I think there are some advocacy groups that overestimate the role of hospital-acquired infections (nosocomial infections) as a cause of death. The ranking I find in one source that is readily looked up

http://www.cwru.edu/med/epidbio/mphp439/Hospital_Acquired_In...

is lower. A general ranking of causes of death in the United States by the standard WHO definitions

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w...

gives a different picture of which causes of death rank highest, and which have declined the most in recent decades. Life expectancy is up at all ages in the United States, even though most people have a hospital visit at some time in life.

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