Critical care : the official journal of the Critical Care Forum
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Multicenter Study
Costs and benefits of rapid screening of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus carriage in intensive care units: a prospective multicenter study.
Pre-emptive isolation of suspected methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) carriers is a cornerstone of successful MRSA control policies. Implementation of such strategies is hampered when using conventional cultures with diagnostic delays of three to five days, as many non-carriers remain unnecessarily isolated. Rapid diagnostic testing (RDT) reduces the amount of unnecessary isolation days, but costs and benefits have not been accurately determined in intensive care units (ICUs). ⋯ In a low endemic setting for MRSA, RDT safely reduced the number of unnecessary isolation days on ICUs by 44%, at the costs of €121.76 to €136.04 per isolation day avoided.