• J A Otter, M T Herdman, B Williams, O Tosas, J D Edgeworth, and G L French.
• Centre for Clinical Infection and Diagnostics Research, Department of Infectious Diseases, King's College London, Guy's and St. Thomas' Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK. jonathan.otter@kcl.ac.uk
• J. Hosp. Infect. 2013 Feb 1; 83 (2): 114-21.

BackgroundThere is debate over the optimal policy for detecting meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) colonization at hospital admission. The emergence of community-associated (CA)-MRSA may compromise targeted screening strategies based on risk factors for healthcare-associated (HA)-MRSA.AimTo determine the prevalence of MRSA colonization at admission, and the genotype and molecular epidemiology of the strains involved.MethodsA 12-month observational study was performed at a 1200-bed London tertiary referral hospital from 1 April 2008 to 1 March 2009. All available MRSA isolates were genotyped by spa and staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) typing.FindingsThe overall MRSA colonization rate was 2.0% of 28,892 admissions (range 6.6% in critical care to 0.8% in obstetrics/gynaecology/neonatology). The overall frequency of previously unknown carriage of MRSA on admission was 1.4%. Most colonizing strains were epidemic HA-MRSA-15 and -16. However, heterogeneous CA strains accounted for 18% of recovered isolates, including 37.5% of MRSA from accident and emergency and 23.1% of MRSA from surgery. The CA-MRSA strain types had significantly different epidemiological associations from the HA-MRSA strains, so risk factors used for the identification of HA-MRSA may not detect CA-MRSA reliably.ConclusionThe low rate of HA-MRSA in the UK increases the relative proportion due to CA-MRSA, for which conventional risk-factor-based screening strategies may be less effective. Cost-benefit analyses of universal MRSA admission screening will need to take account of this new epidemiology.Copyright © 2012 The Healthcare Infection Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

34 keywords...

hide…