U.S. hospitals rife with superbug bacteria: survey

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A drug-resistant type of "superbug" bacteria called MRSA is more than eight times as common as believed in U.S. hospitals, putting patients at risk and posing a big hygiene problem, experts said on Tuesday.

They found that nearly 5 percent of patients -- 46 out of every 1,000 -- were infected or colonized with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA for short.

The one-day "snapshot" look at infection suggests that 1.2 million U.S. hospital patients may be infected each year, the survey by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology or APIC found.

Most of the infections have clearly originated in the hospitals and do not, contrary to popular belief, affect mostly intensive care patients, the experts said.

"This rate is between 8 and 11 times greater than previous MRSA estimates (which were more limited in scope and used different methodologies)," the group said in its report.

And 67 percent of the affected patients were being treated for general medical conditions such as diabetes and pulmonary and cardiac problems.

The survey of 1,200 health care facilities in all 50 states found close to 8,000 patients infected with MRSA, or colonized by the bug, meaning they had it somewhere in or on their bodies but did not have symptoms.

APIC recommends that hospitals and clinics take simple actions to prevent the spread of the bacteria, which has more than double the fatality rate of ordinary staph infections.