Hospitals' hidden danger

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Hospital patients in the United States have to worry about something other than their illness or pending surgery -- the very real threat of acquiring an infection while hospitalized, which may be far more serious than the original problem.

These infections, many of which are drug-resistant, affect one in 20 patients -- or about 2 million people -- each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Hospital infections are the eighth-leading cause of death in the United States.

Johanna Daly, 63, of New York City, died of complications from a hospital infection in May 2004, four months after she went to the Hospital for Joint Diseases in Manhattan for treatment of a fractured shoulder.

"She walked into the hospital as a healthy, beautiful woman. But she wound up there as a quadriplegic on a ventilator. How could this happen?" asked her daughter, Maureen Daly.

Mrs. Daly was a victim of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a particularly dangerous drug-resistant bacterium.

The CDC estimates there are more than 126,000 MRSA infections each year in U.S. hospitals, and more than 5,000 deaths, according to Fran Griffin, a director of the Boston-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI).

Mrs. Daly was released from the hospital five days after her Jan. 20, 2004, surgery. But she returned in mid-February "in great pain," Maureen Daly said. "When the doctor opened the wound, he became alarmed, as all this horrible, rotten-smelling pus came pouring out."

Maureen Daly worried that her mother might lose her arm. But the surgeons in the hospital's emergency room were much more concerned: They told Maureen Daly her mother's life was in danger.

"They cut open her arm without anesthesia, explaining they could not wait," Maureen Daly said. "I held her down, and the two of us became covered in that horrible, foul-smelling liquid."

Maureen Daly said she left the hospital after the second surgery, but returned after receiving a call that her mother had been put on a ventilator and had a temperature higher than 106 degrees Fahrenheit.