Low Rates of Nasal Colonization With Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Among Staff Members of an Italian Hospital

Prevalence of methicillin‐resistant Staphylococcus aureus among health care workers of intensive care units in Ecuador

“…Even though comparisons between studies are difficult because of the big differences in numbers of participants, low rates of MRSA colonization in the ICUs of three health care facilities (3/109, 1/57, 1/44) were similar to the frequencies found in other ICU studies in Italy (0/27) and France (2/68) [3,5]. However, the frequencies observed were lower than in other studies of ICU health care workers from other countries of the region such as Paraguay (20/142) and Colombia (3/26) [6,7].…”

The role of healthcare personnel in the maintenance and spread of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus

“…The latter may be quite relevant for circumstances where an epidemiological link may be sought and where nurses and physicians are the staff carriers primarily investigated. Carrier staff may be localized to one specific service or widely distributed throughout a facility [62,70]. There is increased carriage of MRSA in clinical wards than elsewhere [71,84].…”

“…Some have proposed that staff carrier rates may be so low that no such screening should be conducted [185]. The latter view is very much in the minority, and staff surveillance cultures have been procured in numerous outbreaks as part of the various control methods [25][26][27]29,31,33,35,36,39,[41][42][43]45,53,59,60,63,65,70,[74][75][76][77]86,[92][93][94]96,104,106,111,113,117,120,124,127,129,131,139,159,183,[186][187][188]. Some have proposed that staff screening should be an active component of routine control methods [36,41,43,…”

“…Poor compliance with handwashing is a systemic problem and may occur despite the healthcare workers' knowledge [9,70,212]. Some facilities lack readily available handwashing stations [212].…”

“…Treatment failure of carriage may also occur purely due to the frank refusal to accept eradication regimens [84]. Some have suggested that culture-negative status for healthcare workers could promote a false sense of security [70]. Such discord and controversies have the potential to create strained relationships with infection control services and/or management [40,113], and mistrust and non-compliance may especially be accentuated with the spectre that MRSA carriage might interfere with careers.…”