Prevención de la infección intrahospitalaria por Staphylococcus aureus resistente a meticilina mediante el manejo de portadores

Abstract

Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) nosocomial infection is very prevalent and has important therapeutic and economic implications. S aureus carriers appear to play the major role on its pathogenesis, they can be part of the medical team as well as patients. In this trial we studied S. aureus and MRSA carriers on the pediatric ICU’s medical team and patients. The medical team had 28.8% (n: 13) of S. aureus carriage and 8.8% (n: 4) of MRSA on a nasal culture. On the other hand, patients were 33.5% (n: 43) positive at different hospitalization periods for S. aureus and 16,4% (n: 21) for MRSA. All of MRSA carriers were treated with nasal mupirocin. After the first treatment cycle we found 100% eradication on the medical team group, and 85.7% on patients, which increased to 100% after the second treatment cycle. The ICU’s MRSA nosocomial infection rate was significantly reduced during this study, from 5.19% (1998) to 0.57% (1999 first semester). We concluded that carrier treatment confers an important benefit, but it must be always associated to general measures for infection control, such a good hand scrubing.