Mrsa Infections

A previously healthy, 14-year-old girl is admitted to the hospital after complaints of painful swelling of her lower lip, with periodic spotty, blood-tinged drainage from several discrete areas with overlying dark scabs.

Three pediatric hospitals that discontinued contact precautions for MRSA did not see an associated increase in MRSA over the course of the next 4 years, according to researchers published in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.

Implementing a pharmacist-driven MRSA nasal-swab ordering protocol, followed by a 72-hour approval protocol, led to a significant reduction in antibiotic administration and vancomycin use, researchers found.

A repeated decolonization regimen successfully allowed health care workers who were previously colonized with MRSA to safely continue working in a neonatal intensive care unit, and it also ended an outbreak, a recent study showed.

An international, biospecimen registry on Staphylococcus aureus in fixation or arthroplasty showed higher rates of MRSA in North American patients and poorer subjective outcomes among those with MRSA vs. methicillin-sensitive S. aureus.