RESEARCH ARTICLE Incidence and cost of hos u t

Full list of author information is available at the end of the articleBackground Skin and soft tissue infections (SSTIs) are common rea-sons for seeking medical care, and can have significant morbidity including hospitalization [1,2]. In patients hos-pitalized due to SSTI, Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is the most common bacterial pathogen identified [3-5]. In the past, methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) in-fections were mostly confined to patients with risk fac-tors such as hospitalization or recent healthcare contact [6]. More recently however, there has been a dramatic increase in community-associated MRSA (CA-MRSA) infections which often present as SSTIs, affecting indi-viduals without prior risk factors3;6. The emergence of MRSA in SSTIs has challenged treatment, as this bacter-ium is resistant to beta-lactam antibiotics that were previously the standard of care for S. aureus-SSTI treat-ment [5]. In the U.S.A. between 1997 and 2005, the overall an-nual rate of visits for SSTIs to physician offices, hospital outpatient departments, and emergency departments in-creased from 32.1 to 48.1 visits per 1,000 people, which at the U.S. population level, equated to 14.2 million total SSTI visits in 2005 [7]. S. aureus hospitalizations also in