Environmental Contamination as a Potential Source of MRSA Transmission.
The researchers note that MRSA nasal carriage of MRSA among healthcare workers at the study hospital was not a significant source of infection due to routine healthcare worker screening and ambitious hand hygiene practices. They do emphasize that “the hospital environment seems to pose a threat for nosocomial transmission,” and say that S. aureus is able to survive for months in a relatively hostile environment, thus potentially representing environmental reservoirs of MRSA. The researchers point to the seminal review by Dancer in 2008 that highlighted the importance of the hospital environment for MRSA transmission, and that removal of debris that helps support microbial growth can help control this transmission. The researchers caution however, “Although the hospital environment was identified as a possible source of nosocomial MRSA transmission, healthcare worker could not be excluded as a clinically relevant source, because healthcare workers still carried strains with significant numbers of virulence genes.”
