A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found screening patients for methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) on admission to the hospital did not reduce the MRSA infection rate.
The study of more than 21,000 surgical patients at a Swiss teaching hospital compared the use of rapid screening and standard infection-control measures with infection-control measures alone.
“Overall, our real-life trial did not show an added benefit for widespread rapid screening on admission compared with standard MRSA control alone in preventing nosocomial, MRSA infections in a large surgical department,” according to the study.
