Fighting Infection

摘要

Health care-associated infections - those that strike patients when they are being treated for other conditions in a hospital or other health care facility - are one of the top 10 leading causes of death in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). An estimated 1.7 million patients are affected yearly, and 99,000 die from health care-associated infections, which most commonly strike the urinary tract, surgical sites, lungs (resulting in pneumonia), and bloodstream. The cost of treating these infections runs into the tens of billions of dollars annually.