The University Medical Center’s Surgical Intensive Care Unit has implemented a new antibiotic rotation method to try to ensure patients remain healthy during their hospital stays.
The research team, headed by Dr. Robert Sawyer, co-director of the surgical trauma intensive care unit, looked to prevent bacterial staph infections common in hospitals — officially known as methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus infections — from occurring in ICU patients.
MRSA “is, in many hospitals, the most common cause of pneumonia developed in hospitals,” Sawyer said.
Sawyer’s team used “cycling,” or switching the type of antibiotic medicine given to patients, to prevent them from contracting other illnesses caused by MRSA while they recovered.
A different antibiotic would be used on patients every three months, Sawyer explained.
“Other hospitals have done this with other bacteria, but we’re the first that we know of that has used it for MRSA,” Sawyer said, noting this method has proven very effective.
“We have 25 to 35 new infections a year in our intensive care units,” Sawyer said. “And we were able to reduce that down to five to 10. MRSA decreased significantly.”
Sawyer noted that MRSA has gained national attention because of the public health threat it has recently posed in communities; however, the infection has been a problem in hospitals for the past 30 to 40 years.
After years of being unable to properly treat the infection in hospitals, “cycling has shown a lot of promise,” said Brian Swenson, University Hospital general surgery resident. He said he anticipates more medical centers will adopt the method, but also noted they will use it with caution.
According to Sawyer, medical centers will need to be careful with the method because “anytime you expose any bacteria to an antibiotic, there is the risk of resistance.”
During the study, the team worked with the microbiology lab to track what percentage of staph infections resisted the antibiotic used.
“The bacteria could be resistant to a number of different antibiotics,” Sawyer said. “And that’s why we have to be very careful.”
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