Has Methicillin‐ResistantStaphylococcus aureusStopped Spreading in Intensive Care Units?

Abstract

SIR—Nijssen et al. [1] found no spread of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) over a 10-week period from 9 MRSA-colonized patients admitted to their intensive care unit (ICU), but they did not specify what infection-control precautions were being followed in the ICU, making reported compliance with gloving and hand hygiene difficult to interpret. Compliance with standard precautions? Universal barrier precautions? A combination of both? Moreover, they reported such compliance for ICU nurses but not for other health care workers, whom they acknowledged to be more prone to spread MRSA because of more-frequent movement from patient to patient. Study methods specified that health care workers were not provided surveillance culture results but did not specify whether health care workers knew that a study was being conducted or were otherwise encouraged to maintain higher levels of compliance than were previously documented in the same ICU [2].