MRSA stands for methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) bacteria. This organism is known for causing skin infections, in addition to many other types of infections. There are other designations in the scientific literature for these bacteria according to where the bacteria are acquired by patients, such as community-acquired MRSA and hospital-acquired MRSA or epidemic MRSA.
According to a study by researchers from the Lennox Hill-Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital, 80 percent of all surgical-site infections that occur after facelifts are caused by MRSA.

MRSA, which is resistant to antibiotics, has become the leading organism responsible for skin, soft tissue and surgical-site infections in the United States, according to the Lennox Hill-Manhattan study. Because of its higher virulence and resistance to antibiotics, MRSA kills three times as many patients as more conventional S. aureus infections.

Although S. aureus has been causing infections (staph infections) probably as long as the human race has existed, MRSA has a relatively short history. MRSA was first noted in 1961, about two years after the antibiotic methicillin was initially used to treat S. aureus and other infectious bacteria. The resistance to methicillin was due to a penicillin-binding protein coded for by a mobile genetic element termed the methicillin resistant gene. In recent years, the gene has continued to evolve so that many MRSA strains are currently resistant to several different antibiotics. S. aureus is sometimes termed a "superbug"? because of its ability to become resistant to several antibiotics.

The researchers in the Lennox Hill-Manhattan study reviewed the medical charts of 780 patients who had undergone a deep-plane rhytidectomy between January 2001 and January 2007. All patients had been treated by a single surgeon at the same outpatient center. Some of the patients also had other cosmetic surgical procedures performed at the same time.

All patients underwent the same measures to prevent infection, including showering and washing their hair with chlorhexidine before the surgery, having their faces scrubbed with chlorhexidine and povidone-iodine immediately before the incision, and getting an intravenous dose of cefazolin sodium. Patients also took oral antibiotics for seven days after the procedure.

Probably due to these protective measures, the overall rate of infection was very low, at 0.6 percent. Eighty percent of those developing an infection, however, became infected with MRSA.

"For surgical site infections, the facial plastic surgeon should have a high suspicion for MRSA as the causative pathogen,"? the researchers said.

MRSA outbreaks are appearing increasingly in the community. Infections can occur in people who have not been hospitalized or had a medical procedure performed in the past year, and who do not have immune deficiency. These are community-associated MRSA infections.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 12 percent of MRSA infections are now community-associated, but the percentage can vary by community and patient population.