The Journal of infectious diseases
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Multicenter Study
Improving methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus surveillance and reporting in intensive care units.
Routine culturing of patients in intensive care units (ICUs) for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) identifies unrecognized carriers and facilitates timely isolation. However, the benefit of surveillance in detecting prevalent and incident carriers likely varies among ICUs. In addition, many assessments underestimate the incidence of acquisition by including prevalent carriers in the at-risk population. ⋯ Routine surveillance significantly increases the detection of MRSA, but this benefit is not uniform across ICUs, even with high compliance and the use of correct denominators.