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MRSA Ear Infections
MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staph aureus) is the name of a feared, antibiotic resistant, species of bacteria that can cause serious infections, especially in hospitals or in those whose immune systems have been compromised. But MRSA is now turning up in the ears of otherwise healthy children in otherwise healthy communities, according to a study in the October 2005 Archives of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery. Ear drainage is common after ear tubes are placed in children. The authors of this study obtained cultures of this discharge, and found that MRSA is now commonly present. The good news is that, when it is isolated to the ear, the MRSA is usually easy to treat with topical antibiotic ear drops. But far more important than treating the MRSA is preventing this infection, which can be quite serious if it spreads. The authors suggest that minimizing oral antibiotic use for ear infections to situations where the antibiotics are important can help prevent MRSA. The kids whose ear drainage had MRSA in the study averaged having had twice as many courses of oral antibiotics, lasting twice as long, as did their counterparts whose ear drainage featured much more benign bacteria. The AAP 2004 guidelines for treating ear infections offer clear instructions on which children need oral antibiotics for their ear infections, and which children (most children) will do better without them.
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Alan Greene MD FAAP
Reviewed by Alan Greene MD FAAP December 2005
October 30, 2005 | Permalink
Comments
I have a 21 month old son that I have been battling MRSA since Sept 2007. What I thought were little spider bites that were getting infected has been MRSA. They have only done 1 culture the entire time, they have cut the wounds open now twice, they keep on giving him Keflex which obvioously is not working. He has an outbreak every 3 months and we have been to the infectious disease doctor where they put him on Keflex once again, but this time they gave him Rifampin to take with it. I thought we were finally rid of it for good, but he has it back on his leg now. Through all this I have asked for a nasal swab and have been told no. This truly besides the culture of the wound is the only way to diagnose if he is the carrier or if someone else in our family is the carrier. Now I have researched and have yet to discuss with the doctor of the possible reason of the reoccuring MRSA may be from the MMR and Chicken pox vaccines his is given, they are live vaccines that can compromise the immune system in some children.
I wonder if he continues being given antibiotics and he truly ends up with a common cold that needs antibiotics if they won't work because his entire system is now immune to all antiobiotics ? He is already allergic to all cillins.
Posted by: Kim Woods | Jul 4, 2008 12:50:03 PM
I was diagnosed with MRSA in my right ear about six years ago. For years I had been treated with every antibiotic known which was the wrong thing to do...I was sent to specialist after specialist for CT scan of my sinuses..an MRI of my temporal bone, hospitalized on IV Fortis...ear drops prescribed, and my nasal passages were scoped a few times and I could continue... Finally --- the last specialist I saw took a culture...something very simple that should have been done initially. Every physician I had seen for years and years used the old shot gun approach...if one thing does not work we will try something else. Mastoiditis as well as the danger and the severe pain could possibly have been averted...Of course the Staph Infection continued....
With each incident my ear would start throbbing and then felt like there was a gigantic ice pick poking through my ear and going deep...then the pulsations..and then the gushing of the nasty Staph drainage...sickening. I have two perforations in my ear drum as a result of multiple ear infections.
I am not a child nor am I a young adult...I am a 67 year old mom/gramma...
As an RN I did hands on care for many patients with MRSA...Either I contracted it from a patient or indeed it was directly related to the over prescribing of antibiotics...Now...there are very few drugs that will treat my strain. I am now on
Bactrim DS- should this bug now be resistant to Bactrim I may have to take the IV Vancomycin.
The most important thing I am trying to say here is...If there is nasty drainage...with a foul odor and a brownish-yellow color and the drainage continues as well as severe pain and radiating pain possibly into the head and/or neck please request a culture of the drainage...A physician will usually start the patient on something until the culture report is back..which is uaually 72 hours...and at that point the correct antibiotic will be prescribed...We here in the United States, have heard about the Super bug for years but it was not here...well..what is over there...is now over here...
All purulent drainage should be cultured...
Posted by: CJ | Jun 8, 2008 10:06:36 AM
I had my 1st set of tubes when I was 23 and pregnant w/my 1st child. My husband was concerned that I would not hear the baby when he was born. My ears were bad..!!!! Now I am 50 and have had 17 sets of tubes, skin grafts for drums and 2 each, mastoidectomys on both ears. Just 2 days ago they diagnosed me with MRSA in the ear. The specialist that I had been seeing always had me on ciprodex did he know that it was MRSA..??? He never once called it MRSA, just said that it was infected. I had the surgery 1yr ago this past april and now I am really scared that it may have spread because I'm not sure how long I've had it.I have had drainage off and on since the surgery but because I had no pain or odor I just passed it on as being normal. I'm going to another specialist today. What should I be asking them. PLEASE HELP..!!!
Posted by: Peggy | Jun 4, 2008 12:37:48 PM
My son is almost 3 years old. He has had MRSA in his ear on and off since he was 1 year old. It keeps coming back ,even though he has been on all kinds of antibiotics and ear drops. Any suggestions?
Posted by: LEIGH ANN | Mar 3, 2008 7:31:26 PM
I have a 18 month old son that has had MRSA in his ears for 6 months he has been to so many doctors been on med for months they know its mrsa but no meds have been able to treat it any advice
Posted by: heather | Dec 28, 2007 9:46:02 PM
I have a 18 month old son that has had MRSA in his ears for 6 months he has been to so many doctors been on med for months they know its mrsa but no meds have been able to treat it any advice
Posted by: heather | Dec 28, 2007 9:45:14 PM
I have a 18 month old son that has had MRSA in his ears for 6 months he has been to so many doctors been on med for months they know its mrsa but no meds have been able to treat it any advice
Posted by: heather | Dec 28, 2007 9:44:50 PM
Dr. Greene,
My son had tubes put in at 9 months due to a cleft palate. It's been three months and he's been sick off and on (he was extremely healthy before the surgery.) Finally, he was diagnosed with mrsa in the ear. How long could the mrsa have been in his ear? Could that be what's been causing his lack of weight gain,on and off congestion, and the 3 same ear infections over the last three months? He is not in daycare and all his milk was breast milk the whole first year. He is very low weight and I am worried.
Posted by: Melissa Anderson | Dec 24, 2007 10:13:41 AM
My 4 yr old son has been on antibiotics for like 3 months now and we juand took just got a new one today from urgent care. He has swelling in the lungs and his pediatrican thinks that it is whooping cough or broncilitus. Test results won't be back for at leat another week and the culture 3 weeks. Well he has tubes in his ear and this morning had drainage that ran down the sid of his face looks like ear wax and puss. My husbband to him to the urgent care for kids and they are testing it for MRSA (a cluture that will take a week at least). He is loosing weight, having a hard time sleeping with coughing spells that make him vomit, now a server ear pain and he complains that his head and neck hurts. Is this typical? What should my husband and I do about protecting ourselves so we don't keep passing it around? Should he go to school until the test come back, or is it possible he got these infection (bacteria's) from there? Should I be freaking out just yet? Please respond. Thank you and Happy Thanksgiving.
Posted by: Christina Avigliano | Nov 20, 2007 3:50:49 PM
My son is 11 years old and has had several ear infections his entire life. He had tubes put in his ears at 6yrs old they fell out and the holes that the tubes were in never healed properly. He has alot of drainage from his ears continually. We have been through ear drops, and antibiotics for quite some time now. It seems to take months to get his ears to heal up and then usually within 1-3 months we are right back with the drainage again. He was diagnosed with MRSA in his ear. It did stop for 2 weeks from draining and now it is draining again. We now have him on ear drops. Do you have any suggestions on how I can help him to prevent this from happening? And should he be kept out of school because of the drainage? How do you pass this from one person to the other when it is in the ear???
Thanks
Posted by: Tammy Bower | Nov 6, 2007 7:16:13 AM
I have a close friend with sicle cell. Who has had MRSA for about 5 years now. His iron level is critically high at all times and he suffers from pain crisis in his lower back and chest. Every 3 to 4 weeks he receives a couple of pints of blood to raise his blood count but at the same time the fresh blood brings with it a high dose of iron. At the current time he is on a liver diffusion machine. Now will MRSA only make things worse for him? What can be expected to occur internally in time. He's 23 years old and currently being seen by a Hematologist in the state of KY. Pain medicine, nerve pills,penicillin and now Hydoxyurea supposed to make him feel better but it does'nt come close. Does anybody know of anything we can do for this young man?
Posted by: Troy Branscum | Oct 29, 2007 12:02:54 PM
My son had ear tubes put in when he was young (1-2 years) he had ear aches in the winter we would treat with amox, then augmentin, then omniceph (which seemed to work well), but the infections kept returning. First we thought it was the swim school my son went to, but then we got a culture and MRSA was the culprit, it seems to be resonding to clindomyacin, but everytime he comes off drug it seems to flourish, we are twisting in rifampin as prescribed...my son is being tracked by Infectious Diseases docs nearby, all this scares me as it seems nothing is "working" I wonder what the next drugs are we should try...is there a cure??
Posted by: Dad | Aug 4, 2007 6:19:55 PM
Dr. Greene,
I have a 24 weeker (15 ounces) that is now almost 2. We have had 2 sets of tubes in the ears since december 06 and had his adenoids out in may07. we have been battling ear drainage forever~!!! he had MRSA in the NICU before coming home it was in his eye (treated with vanco eye drops) and colonized in his nose (treated with IV vanco, rifampin and bactroban nasal).
I just had his ear drainage cultrued and it came back MRSA. They put him on 21 days of Bactrim. Is this sufficient? what should be the next step?? should he stay away from daycare?
Posted by: lindsay b | Aug 2, 2007 8:02:55 AM
I am a 23 yr old mother of two. I've been diagnosed with MRSA back in 2001/2002. At first I was told that it was just a spider bite. Obviously it wasnt... t kept on getting reoccuring "boils" and "abssests"... doctors dianosing them as cellulitus. As I was pregnant with my first child I would get like five or six "boils" all at one time. The medication they would give me (Keflex and Pennicillian) I had an allergic reaction to them (difficulty breathing and chills). This went on through out the whole pregnancy.. as soon as i would get rid of the "boils"... I had new ones were popping up. My daughter was born two and a half weeks early because I was having servere stomach pain and my doctor said that my uterus was infected... they didnt want it going to the baby. A couple months later I was pregnant again with my second child. Once again I had the reoccuring "boils"... five and six at a time again. Doctors were still diagnosing them as the same thing. Although cultures have come back positive for MRSA. Matter of fact while in the hospital with my second child they had my hospital room corintined... no one was permitted in unless they had on a gown and gloves. About a week after going home from the hospital I was right back in the hospital because of severe pain in my lower pelvic area along with a hard lump about the size of a baseball. They diagnosed that as a large pocket of MRSA infection and I was scheduled to have surgery to have it removed. They then put me on an antibiotic called Levoquin. It's seemed to calm it down for the most part... or so I thought. That was back in 2004. Now three years later i've had pelvic pain once again but on the opposite side. It's been going on for the last couple of months off and on.. I've been to the local hospital becasue I don't have any insurance, but they keep shrugging it off... saying that it has nothing to do with the "hospital MRSA" that i've had previously. I don't think I've had "hospital MRSA" to begin with... I had this before I even had gotten pregnant the first time. My main concern is what can be done! My boyfriend has had a couple "boils", as well as both of his brothers and their dad. I'm praying that my two children are'nt infected with MRSA considering I was pregnant with them at the time when I was having most of the outbreaks. Also... I just went to the hospital again the other day because I woke up a couple days ago with green drainage out of my ear with servere pain. Throughout the day i had gotten a temperature of 103.8 which had lasted three days. I could barely keep my eyes open and my whole left side of my face and neck began to swell and turn red. The doctor diagnosed it as a pre-exisiting ear problem and that my ear drum has ruptured. He then looked in my other ear an said that ones in fected as well... and referred me to an ENT. Today I woke up and there in like a red/brown discharge ozing out(like the same pus that comes out of MRSA boils). My mother in law has tried to contact the health department, hospitals, even her own family doctor to get some kind of answers... nobody knows!!! We are desperately looking for answers to help us out. After all these years of having doctors diagnosing me with MRSA and then reading that it's becoming an epidemic... it's got me really scared. I've read many times recently that your supossed to be hopitalised until your completely cured. I can't seem to get any doctors to listen to me though. I mean I've got at least thirty something scars all over my body from this. I know that it travels throughout your bloodstream. So that's my question. Is is possble to go from all over my legs, bottom, underarms, and stomach to my ears now, then to my brain and eventually killing me? Please respond back!!!
Posted by: Jennifer | May 14, 2007 1:16:45 PM
I am wondering how you can tell an ear infection is MRSA? My 16 month old daughter has had several ear infections. She also had one abcess diagnosed as MRSA. The doctor said weekly bleach baths and other precautions may have gotten rid of it entirely, is there any way to confirm that it is gone? How can I keep her father (MRSA carrier) frm re-infecting her, other than not allowing him to see her?
Posted by: Melissa Germano | Nov 30, 2006 8:19:26 AM
My two young daughters, ages 5 & 7 have been doctoring with MRSA which started out on my one daughters upper thigh as a pimple and then developed into a nasty absess, very painful to see this on a young child. My other daughter developed little pimples on her bottom and they eventually with clean hands and pressure oozed. Don't worry I made sure everything was clean/cleaned. They were both put on Bactrim Medicine and it seems to have cleared, but now my 7 year old has been having ear drainage for the past 3 weeks. She is post Tubes being put in on November 05. Took her to ENT today and he thinks she may have MRSA in the ear which he has cultured, but could take a week to get results, in mean time he put her on Ciprodex ear drops, a nasal spray and also Zyrtec antibiotic until we know more. I have recently read in local newspapers in my area of Pennsylvania of more and more outbreaks of MRSA. I have been a wreck with paranoia as to where this is coming from, you think to yourself, We are not dirty, we try to keep things as clean as can be, but now my entire family uses more caution than ever. I have been adding about 1 tsp of full strength bleach to our white and colored laundry and hoping it is helping with germs and any bacteria. Towels and washclothes once used are in the laundry. I bleach the tub before and after each use. I am overly cautious now.I have found this website very imformative, if not I can relate to alot of the comments. Thank you
Posted by: Michele Silliman | Sep 18, 2006 6:51:11 PM
My daughter is at the stage now where we just discovered she has the MRSA in her right ear. She has had Tubes in her ears for 2 years now. We are awaiting our appointment to Infectious Specialist. How soon should this begin to be treated for? Our appointment is not for another 3 weeks and what could i expect as their "next step" in this problem? We currently are running into high fevers and ear pain almost 1 week after she completes a dose of antibiotics (both oral and drops) only to be given another dose. I'm quite concerned about this and i really don't know what else to do.
Posted by: Danielle Warner | Sep 16, 2006 7:46:28 AM
Dr. Greene,
My 4 1/2 year old son has battled ear infections since the age of two. We are on our second set of tubes and the infections persist. Over the past year he has endured ear infections that have lasted over 10 weeks that were treated with Ciprodex and irrigating, 6 weeks which were treated with Ciprodex followed by oral antibiotics (including a rupture) and now 4 weeks. With each infection why have found aspergyllis and now both aspergyllis and MRSA. I have gotten so much conflicting information on whether to use Ciprodex or Oral Antibiotics to irrigate to not irrigate, I am exhasperated. My son now complains about buzzing, popping and his ears turning off. I am not sure what to do next?
Posted by: Teri Giesler | Jul 24, 2006 6:08:04 PM
MRSA ear infections aren't always harmless. My 17 year old son developed a MRSA infection in his ear probably from contact during football or wrestling. I found him (6'2", 250 lbs) in the fetal position in tears one evening with ear pain. His temp was 104.7 for several days. He ended up in the hospital for 7 days on Vanco and another 8 or 9 months on an oral antibiotic with frequent visits to ENT as well as Infectous Disease Drs. He was seriously ill. Thank God the worst seems to be past us now and he appears to be MRSA free. DEMAND CULTURES!!!
Posted by: Marie | Jul 7, 2006 12:44:34 PM
I wanted you to know that reading this made me feel SO much better. I just found out today that my son has MRSA ear infection and it was very scary for me beause I almost lost my niece last year to bacterial menengitis (sp?) which started in her ear. My son's pediatrician kept giving him oral antibiotics and ear drops, over and over again over a four month period until I finally bypassed her and went straight to his ENT to did a culture and figured out the problem. He told me how to irrigate his ear (his pediatrician never told me this at all) and I think that has helped the most because it's pulling all that nasty stuff out of his ear.
I just want to thank you. This really reassured me.
Posted by: Margaret Steingraber | Apr 10, 2006 8:46:58 PM
Thank you Dr Greene for ensuring more parents are aware of this and that antibiotic overuse can be avoided. As you may recall my son had this bacteria after surgery to place ear tubes. In our case, treatment was difficult as it was believed the bacteria was living within the tube and topical drops werent helping as there was too heavy level of discharge. After longer then 3 months and 12 courses of antibiotics, the tube was removed and the bacteria treated and cleared. It worries me that parents are allowing overuse of antiobiotics on illnesses that may not require them (I myself am a culprit) to the extent we are now getting mean bacteria like MRSA in normal healthy communities. Not good!
Posted by: Gertie | Nov 7, 2005 4:14:48 PM
Dear Dr. Greene, I am an old patient and have had ear and throat trouble recently due to the scare of the faital flu; I was appreciative of this post on MRSA Ear infecions, I realize that to better protect myself from bacteria I need to use the things that are mentioned by your authority. Thanx, Valarie L. Blume
Posted by: Valarie Blume | Nov 2, 2005 1:08:31 PM
My 11 month old daughter keeps having these recurrent ear infections. She has been on Augmentin and Amoxcicillan within weeks of each other. They were of course oral antibiotics. So far, she's ok, but if this returns, I may have to consider this is what she has.
Posted by: Melissa Baynes | Nov 2, 2005 6:05:34 AM
