Reduction seen in VRE infections, colonization; MRSA colonization but not infection reduced
WEDNESDAY, Aug. 21, 2019 (HealthDay News) — A hospital’s move to entirely single-patient rooms was associated with reductions in multidrug-resistant organism colonization, according to a study published online Aug. 19 in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Emily G. McDonald, M.D., from McGill University in Montreal, and colleagues assessed whether single-patient rooms were associated with decreased rates of common multidrug-resistant organism transmissions and health care-associated infections. Analysis included infections before (Jan. 1, 2013, to March 31, 2015) and after (April 1, 2015, to March 31, 2018) the transition to 100 percent single-patient rooms.
The researchers found that compared with the 27 months before, during the 36 months following a hospital’s move to single-patient rooms, there was an immediate and sustained reduction in nosocomial vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) colonization (from 766 to 209 colonizations; incidence rate ratio [IRR], 0.25; 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.19 to 0.34) and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) colonization (from 129 to 112 colonizations; IRR, 0.57; 95 percent CI, 0.33 to 0.96) as well as VRE infection (from 55 to 14 infections; IRR, 0.30; 95 percent CI, 0.12 to 0.75). There were no decreases in rates of Clostridioides difficile infection (from 236 to 223 infections; IRR, 0.95; 95 percent CI, 0.51 to 1.76) and MRSA infection (from 27 to 37 infections; IRR, 0.89, 95 percent CI, 0.34 to 2.29).
“These findings may have important implications for the role of hospital construction in facilitating infection control,” the authors write.
Copyright © 2019 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
