Many infections tied to medical settings
By Nathan Seppa
From San Francisco, at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy
More than one-fourth of skin or muscle infections that require hospitalization originate from microbes acquired in a clinic, hospital, or other medical-care setting, researchers find.
Using data from 134 hospitals in the northeastern United States, scientists identified 7,329 cases of infection caused by no more than one microbe. The infections typically followed trauma, surgery, or an invasive medical procedure such as kidney dialysis. The researchers excluded infections of the lungs and urinary tract. Staphylococcus aureus accounted for 55 percent of all infections.