BMJ  2005;331 (29 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7523.0-f

Editor's choice

Complicated questions—difficult answers

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Scientific thinking gives a special place to simple solutions and explanations, but getting to those solutions is often messy. This week's journal offers a rich crop of complicated questions—and even more complicated answers.

Take, for example, the question of how many patients bring MRSA with them when they are admitted to hospital? In their study of admissions to Oxfordshire hospitals over seven years David Wyllie and colleagues found that a quarter of cases of MRSA bacteraemia occur in patients who have just arrived from the community, that this proportion is increasing, and that MRSA on admission is strongly associated with previous hospital contact (p 992). They suggest that surveillance for MRSA infection needs to take account of these cases that arrive from the community but seem to be associated with previous health care, a suggestion endorsed by Georgia Duckworth and Andre Charlett in their editorial (p 976. . . [Full text of this article]

Jane Smith, deputy editor

(jsmith@bmj.com)


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Articles

Problems in assessing rates of infection with methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus
David J Spiegelhalter
BMJ 2005 331: 1013-1015. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Orphan drugs and the NHS: should we value rarity?
Christopher McCabe, Karl Claxton, and Aki Tsuchiya
BMJ 2005 331: 1016-1019. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Commissioning for rare diseases: view from the frontline
Amanda Burls, Daphne Austin, and David Moore
BMJ 2005 331: 1019-1021. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Trastuzumab for early breast cancer raises important issues
Edward C F Wilson
BMJ 2005 331: 1023. [Extract] [Full Text]

Improving surveillance of MRSA bacteraemia
Georgia Duckworth and Andr Charlett
BMJ 2005 331: 976-977. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

MRSA bacteraemia in patients on arrival in hospital: a cohort study in Oxfordshire 1997-2003
David H Wyllie, Tim E A Peto, and Derrick Crook
BMJ 2005 331: 992. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

Worlwide burden of orphan diseases
Stevie M Gamble
bmj.com, 2 Nov 2005 [Full text]
Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ