MRSA

SleepyonMagnoliaSt wrote:

Kate M wrote:

SleepyonMagnoliaSt wrote:especially since studies show that 50% of people with cellphone have MRSA ON their cellphones. Meaning you can breathe that in very easily.

Can you supply a source for this number? I find the percentage shockingly high. A study that I saw found ~ 12.5% cell phones collected in a Turkish hospital from patients, visitors and staff had MRSA. This has been considered a frighteningly high number. Your number is 4x that! I would love to know what the source of it is.

Thanks!

Kate

'The study was led by Mehmet Sait Tekerekoglu, MD, of the Department of Medical Microbiology at Inonu University in Malatya.

The researchers took swab samples from 133 mobile phones they obtained from patients, patients, companions, and visitors and 67 from healthcare workers, and ran cultures on bacteria collected from the keypads, microphones and ear parts of each device.

Nearly 40% of the phones collected from patients and their visitors, versus 20.6% of those collected from healthcare workers, showed presence of pathogenic bacteria. "Furthermore (a) higher number of multi-drug resistant pathogens were present on the mobile phones of (the) patients' group (including family members and patients' companions)."'

http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/page- ... rchers-Say##

Yes -- This is the study. There was some strange way they had of reporting the results though. It appears to say that 52% of the phones had S aureus but it also appeared to say that every strain of S aureus found was methicillin resistant which is unlikely. It also said that only about 40% of the phones had pathogenic bacteria, so how 52% could be found to have MRSA is beyond me. Even if it is 52% of the 40% the results are odd. Somewhere else I found data from the study that said 7 of the phones had "multi-drug resistant pathogens such as MRSA" (and none belonged to hospital staff.) And that 1 in 8 (12.5%) of the total sample actually had MRSA. In any case, it was quite unclear as they had multiple ways of reporting the data and I can see where someone would read this as over 50% MRSA, but I think it was an error in reporting the statistics -- unless MRSA is far more prevalent in Turkey than it is in the USA which is entirely possible. Many strange numbers from the same study!

But I am sure that 50% is far too high a number.

Third world calculator:
cardboard with five holes it it for fingers of user's non-dominant hand.
Advanced models can be used left handed by flipping unit over--worth the extra 30 bucks!

chunkyfrog wrote:Third world calculator:
cardboard with five holes it it for fingers of user's non-dominant hand.
Advanced models can be used left handed by flipping unit over--worth the extra 30 bucks!

I need one of these!

all of this discussion about germs and bacteria have given me the heebie-jeebie's....

I just scrubbed all of my equipment..... 1st time in 3-4 months for some parts

Dave

If you still have an active MRSA infection, using your own "contaminated" CPAP equipment probably isn't going to make much difference until after you kill the MRSA that's already in your body.

Also, if you get a new mask, hose, etc. now, you'll recontaminate them right away unless you wait until you're proven MRSA free. Maybe not even then. I'm not sure you ever get 100% MRSA free, but you certainly won't be MRSA free immediately.

However, clean it all really well, anyway. The ResMed hot water cleaning instructions for masks and hoses are listed in the useful links in my signature line. Basically, boil a large pot of water, and turn the heat off or turn it way down to where you just keep it from cooling too fast. Then use a thermometer and carefully soak the parts in the hot water for the right time and temperature.

BTW, this is ResMed instructions. I couldn't find Respironics instructions. At worst, you damage one of the parts, but I've done this stuff to all my Respironics stuff with no problems, except some slight damage to a hose when I used over 75C water on the hose.

Clean everything first.

Disassemble and drop the water tank into the water while measuring the water temp. The water tank gets 93C/199F for 10 minutes.

Disassemble the mask, and remove the hose if the mask has its own hose. The hose seems to not be as heat resistant as the rest of the mask. Remove the cloth headgear and don't "heat treat" it. Soak the plastic parts of the mask in the water at one of the following temperatures.

158°F (70°C)-100 min
167°F (75°C)-30 min
176°F (80°C)-10 min
194°F (90°C)-1 min

I wouldn't use hot water soak on foam mask parts.

The main air hose and the mask hose don't seem to be as heat proof. Soak them for 30 minutes at 75C/167F or higher. Be sure there are no big air bubbles and swish the water through the hose occasionally. I'm not sure the Respironics heated hose can be immersed like this.

In theory, 60C/140F for 30 minutes kills MRSA. These processes should kill it off. Especially if you do it in addition to whatever other cleaning you do.

Clean and sanitize everything again once you're fairly sure your body is MRSA free.

Get and use the Control III, too. Do the hot water cure occasionally. I'm always more confident with heat cleaning vs. chemicals. Chemicals might not get into the "cracks," might be stale, might not be mixed right, the bug might have developed resistance, etc.

I really like having two masks, two hoses, two water tanks, and swapping them every week. After cleaning, let the clean set dry out and sit dry for a whole week to help kill off germs. Dry air won't necessarily kill of MRSA, but it helps. Or at least helps keep it from growing.

For the cloth headgear, I thoroughly wet it with "Everclear," 95% pure drinking alcohol and put it in a jar overnight to keep it from evaporating. I just get the headgear thoroughly wet, not fill the jar up. Then I take the headgear out and let it dry. Be careful, pure alcohol is flammable.

By the way, there's not just one MRSA germ. There are a whole lot of different strains. It's a bit like the different strains of flu.

Be sure to consider how to sanitize all your sheets, pillows, and anything else that gets close to your CPAP.

Once again, I'm not sure that you really need to do that much sanitization to prevent reinfecting yourself. You've already got the germs in your body and hopefully, your body will have a head start on fighting off reinfection if you encounter the same germ again. The big concern on sanitization is to prevent you from spreading the germs to someone who doesn't already have it. Presumably no one else is using or handling your CPAP equipment.

It's all the lunatic sanitization freaks that are creating MRSA germs in the first place.

DreamStalker wrote:It's all the lunatic sanitization freaks that are creating MRSA germs in the first place.

+10!

We need our friendly bacteria, fungus, yeast, virus, the whole gang to help us fight disease. They are finding more and more that what we are doing to our microbiome is killing us. We need to learn to live in harmony with our own symbionts, which do indeed outnumber us 10 to one, and the world microbiome probably much more than a trillion to one.

Let the good bugs find and take care of the bad bugs. You will never kill all of the bad bugs. You will, however, kill enough of the good bugs to make yourself vulnerable to the bad bugs.

+1000!
We live in--; we ARE an ecosystem. Symbiosis keeps us alive.
From the coliform that process our food, to the tiny mites on our skin and hair; we enjoy health together.

chunkyfrog wrote:Third world calculator:
cardboard with five holes it it for fingers of user's non-dominant hand.
Advanced models can be used left handed by flipping unit over--worth the extra 30 bucks!

3 foot bamboo stick $10, so you can reach your toes! (Adds Scientific Notation) Jim

chunkyfrog wrote:+1000!
We live in--; we ARE an ecosystem. Symbiosis keeps us alive.
From the coliform that process our food, to the tiny mites on our skin and hair; we enjoy health together.

I really hope those in the health care system catch on to this soon. Then, perhaps, the reputation for getting sicker and sicker the more time you spend in the hospital will become a thing of the past.

Archangel, thanks for the info on heating the equipment. I will definitely try it.

DreamStalker wrote:It's all the lunatic sanitization freaks that are creating MRSA germs in the first place.

That and people who nag their medical professional until they get antibiotics for every sniffle, and those who only take antibiotics until they begin to feel better.

Pachyderm's Nose wrote:

DreamStalker wrote:It's all the lunatic sanitization freaks that are creating MRSA germs in the first place.

That and people who nag their medical professional until they get antibiotics for every sniffle, and those who only take antibiotics until they begin to feel better.

I wonder which would do more damage to your microbiome. A course of antibiotics. A half course of antibiotics (this would produce superbugs efficiently). Or a diet of sugar laced and highly processed well preserved carbohydrates prepared and served in a sterile environment.

What most people fail to realize is that we carry on our body, 10 times more bacteria cells than our own human cells ... we are like giant hotels to bacteria.

Now that we have sufficiently creeped out all the clean freaks--{{smile}}