Colonised Staff Pass on MRSA despite Hand Hygiene & Masks

Link: Review Urges Aggressive MRSA Screening for Health Workers - washingtonpost.com.

"Poor infection control practices were implicated in both acquisition and transmission of MRSA by personnel, but even good adherence to infection control -- including masks and hand hygiene -- did not entirely prevent transmission of MRSA from heavily colonized staff to patients," they wrote. A recent review of MRSA outbreaks suggested that health-care worker screening should focus on those with symptoms of MRSA infection, but this approach would likely miss a large number of MRSA-infected workers with no symptoms, the review authors said. "Screening of infected health-care workers only will likely miss a large number of asymptomatic personnel capable of transmitting MRSA to patients, since staphylococcal carriage is mainly dependent on whether the person is a nasal carrier (of MRSA)... Our search revealed 18 studies with proven, and 26 studies with likely, transmission to patients from (health-care workers) who were not clinically infected with MRSA," the authors wrote.