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Objective: To define conditions in which contact precautions can be safely discontinued for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE). Design: Interrupted time series. Setting: 15 acute-care hospitals. Participants: Inpatients. Intervention: Contact precautions for endemic MRSA and VRE were discontinued in 12 intervention hospitals and continued at 3 nonintervention hospitals. Rates of MRSA and VRE healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) were collected for 12 months before and after. Trends in HAI rates were analyzed using Poisson regression. To predict conditions when contact precautions may be safely discontinued, selected baseline hospital characteristics and infection prevention practices were correlated with HAI rate changes, stratified by hospital. Results: Aggregated HAI rates from intervention hospitals before and after discontinuation of contact precautions were 0.14 and 0.15 MRSA HAI per 1,000 patient days (P = .74), 0.05 and 0.05 VRE HAI per 1,000 patient days (P = .96), and 0.04 and 0.04 MRSA laboratory-identified (LabID) events per 100 admissions (P = .57). No statistically significant rate changes occurred between intervention and non-intervention hospitals. All successful hospitals had low baseline MRSA and VRE HAI rates and high hand hygiene adherence. We observed no correlations between rate changes after discontinuation and the assessed hospital characteristics and infection prevention factors, but the rate improved with higher proportion of semiprivate rooms (P = .04). Conclusions: Discontinuing contact precautions for MRSA/VRE did not result in increased HAI rates, suggesting that contact precautions can be safely removed from diverse hospitals, including community hospitals and those with lower proportions of private rooms. Good hand hygiene and low baseline HAI rates may be conditions permissive of safe removal of contact precautions.

The efficacy of single-dose therapy with cefonicid (1 g intramuscularly) and multidose therapy with amoxicillin (500 mg orally three times a day for 7 days) was compared for the treatment of uncomplicated lower urinary tract infection in women. Of 50 patients with symptoms of lower urinary tract infection randomized to receive either cefonicid or amoxicillin, 39 were infected with >105 bacteria per ml. At early posttherapy follow-up (5 to 18 days), 19 of 21 (90%o) cefonicid-treated patients and 16 of 18 (89%) amoxicillin-treated patients were cured. At late posttherapy follow-up (6 to 7 weeks), 16 of 18 (89%o) cefonicid-treated patients and 14 of 15 (93%) amoxicillin-treated patients were cured. One patient was lost to follow-up in each late follow-up group. There were fewer side effects in the cefonicid-treated group. There were significantly more organisms resistant to amoxicillin than to cefonicid in the study population. Considering the small size of the series, single-dose therapy with cefonicid for lower urinary tract infection in women appears to be as safe and effective as conventional multidose therapy with amoxicillin.

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