Monitoring the spread of meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in The Netherlands from a reference laboratory perspective

Background: In The Netherlands, efforts to control meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in hospitals have been largely successful due to stringent screening of patients on admission and isolation of those that fall into defined risk categories. However, Dutch hospitals are not free of MRSA, and a considerable number of cases are found that do not belong to any of the risk categories. Some of these may be due to undetected nosocomial transmission, whereas others may be introduced from unknown reservoirs. Aim: Identifying multi-institutional clusters of MRSA isolates to estimate the... Mehr ...