A super resistant bacteria that is disables any antibiotic has cropped up in Tel Aviv and has been traced back to a patient in New Jersey. The bacteria produces an enzyme, Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenamase, or KPC that disables carbapenam antibiotics that have been used as last ditch treatments for infections that don’t respond to anything else. Doctors say that we have now lost our drug of last resort. Most of these infections are isolated to hospital patients and have not spread to the community but they are cropping up nationwide, although are currently concentrated in New York and New Jersey. According to the medical director of infection control at New York Presbyterian Hospital, Yoko Furuya, they are seeing a lot of KPC cases.
This puts hospitals and doctors in the same position they were 15 years ago trying to fight staph aureus infections. New tests can now distinguish between many different infectious diseases and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has posted updated guidelines in March of 2009 or doctors and hospital staff treating patients infected with similar difficult to treat infections. Some of the precautions recommended include wearing gloves and gowns to prevent spreading the disease to other patients. The CDC indicates that these infections are being rapidly spread worldwide making it even more critical to know which infection patients have contracted.
Written by www.labtestingnow.com