Link: USATODAY.com.
Reducing the number of infections patients contract while in hospitals would not only benefit patients but also hospitals’ profits.
Researchers say the finding in a study out Monday counters an assumption that hospitals make money on patients who fall ill with a hospital-acquired infection because they often receive higher payments from insurers for dealing with complicated cases. But the higher payments do not cover the additional costs.
"This adds economic strength to the notion that we ought to be doing away with infections," says Richard Shannon, co-author of the study and vice chair of clinical affairs in the department of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
"Not only is it the right thing to do from the patient perspective," he says, "but infections are in fact costing payers and hospitals lots of money."
His study showed an average $26,839 loss to the hospital for each patient who came down with one type of infection called a central-line-associated bloodstream infection. A central line is a catheter placed into a vein to provide fluids or medication. Of 54 patients who got that type of infection during a three-year period at the one hospital studied, only four resulted in a break-even or profit for the hospital.
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What is Phage Therapy? Prior to the discovery and widespread use of antibiotics, bacterial infections were treated worldwide by the administration of bacteriophages. Bacteriophages or phages are highly specific viruses that invade bacterial cells and, in the case of lytic phages, disrupt bacterial metabolism and cause the bacterium to die. Interestingly it was the French-Canadian microbiologist, Felix d’Herelle, while working at the Institute Pasteur in Paris in 1917 who is credited with discovering and promoting phage therapy. While the use of phage therapy was discontinued in the West soon after the discovery of antibiotics they continued to be utilized in Eastern Europe and today many infections untreatable with antibiotics can be treated in clinics in Georgia (Europe) and Poland. Once one accepts the fact that it requires microscopes to see the world of bacteria and bacteriophages, phage therapy may be compared to any biological control methodology and can conceptually be described as: What a cat is to a mouse the right bacteriophage is to a specific bacterium or superbug. Phage therapy has been going on in nature as a balancing force in the evolution of microbes for a long time. Medical phage therapy is simply the intervention of humans to ensure that the balance is in favour of bacteriophages over susceptible bacterial pathogens! While there is considerable expertise on phage therapy in Canada at the research level as can be substantiated by googling phage therapy (“pages from Canada” only), medical phage therapy is not currently approved or practised in Canada; however, according to a letter signed by the former federal health minister phage therapy can be made available legally to Canadian patients under the Special Access Program of our Food & Drugs Act! A discussion of phage therapy is currently very timely, not only because too many patients are dying of superbug infections; but also because of the recent release of the Canadian film: Killer Cure: The Amazing Adventures of Bacteriophage and the June 2006 release of the English book by Thomas Haeusler entitled Viruses vs. Superbugs, a solution to the antibiotics crisis? ( see http://www.bacteriophagetherapy.info ) – both are available at Ottawa libraries. Additionally, the record of an excellent question-and-answer session with Dr. Roger Johnson of the Public Health Agency of Canada can be found at http://meristem.com/topstories/ts06_08.html .
Further, the phage therapy file has dramatically changed during the last few weeks because the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has amended the US food additive regulations to provide for the safe use of a bacteriophage preparation on ready-to-eat meat and poultry products as an antimicrobial agent against Listeria monocytogenes (see http://www.fda.gov/OHRMS/DOCKETS/98fr/02f-0316-nfr0001.pdf ). This excellent submission evaluation changes the scientific validity of phage therapy from Eastern European science, which sadly too many of us Westerners dismiss with hubris and bias as not credible, to approved and supported by the all-knowing and all-seeing FDA at least for ready-to-eat meats. Otherwise the US situation is similar to the Canadian situation – much expertise at the research level but little human treatment, which is a pity.
Superbugs are everybody’s business because superbugs make everybody their business and every North American should study the above references because sooner or later everybody will be faced with an infection or know a relative or friend who will be suffering or dying with one. Withholding such treatment from patients when antibiotics are failing ought to be a crime; however, those who have the money, knowledge and time to travel when faced with an infection where antibiotics are failing may be able to get phage therapy treatment in Georgia ( http://www.phagetherapycenter.com ) or Poland – http://www.aite.wroclaw.pl/phages/phages.html .
I have had Pseudomonas Aeruginosa in my sinus region since sinus surgery in 1994! I have been miserable ever since. It is sickening to be able to smell within your own nose, smelling like beer hops! It makes me exhausted every day and I just drag. Anyone have any suggestions?