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MRSA testing near me is very important in some facilities. For example, the California state law requires all hospitals to test some patients for MRSA or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. If you are admitted to a hospital for surgery and you are considered susceptible to an infection or rather MRSA infection, it is a requirement that you get tested for this germ.
Staph or staphylococcus aureus are very common types of bacteria. MRSA is a penicillin-resistant type of staph. This means that it cannot be killed by penicillin or any other similar antibiotics. Penicillin is the drug most commonly used for staph infection treatment. It is difficult to treat MRSA because it is resistant to a lot of antibiotics.
About one out of three people has staph on their skin or in their nose without it causing any harm and about one out of 100 people carry MRSA without becoming sick. However, in some cases, MRSA or staph can cause an infection. The infection may look like a red and painful bump under the skin, sores that feel and look like spider bites, swollen and hot puss-filled cuts, an area of red and warm firm skin that is painful and gets larger, and/or blisters filled with red skin or fluid with a honey-colored crust. Infections caused by MRSA do not look different from infections caused by any other ordinary staph.
Test results
When you go for MRSA testing and test positive, you will be considered colonized with MRSA. When you are colonized it means that at the moment you got a nose swab, MRSA was present. On the other hand, if the test turns out to be negative, it means that you are not colonized with MRSA. It is important to understand that being colonized with MRSA does not make you sick and no treatment is required. If there is an infection then your doctor will treat it. There are various types of treatments such as taking antibiotics and draining the sores.
What will happen if you test positive?
If you test positive, you should just carry on with your daily duties as usual and remind your nurses, doctors and other healthcare providers to clean their hands before they touch your items or you. You should also ask visitors who come to your hospital room to clean their hands when they enter your room and after they leave.
When at home, some of the steps to take when you test positive include cleaning your hands often, making sure you know how to properly take care of any intravenous (IV) lines and wounds, keeping your wounds clean and changing bandages as directed until the wounds have properly healed, and routinely cleaning the surfaces you touch such as doorknobs, faucets, keyboards, remote control and so on.
When you test positive after MRSA testing near me, you should know that staph can spread to other people through the skin to skin contact or/and by touching surfaces that are already contaminated with the bacteria such as used bandages, towels and so on.
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