Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 17, 2026
08:30
One-day Workflow Scheme for Bacterial Pathogen Detection and Antimicrobial Resistance Testing from Blood Cultures
Published on: July 9, 2012
Improving the assessment of vancomycin-resistant enterococci by routine screening
Susan S Huang1, Sheryl L Rifas-Shiman, Jean M Pottinger
1Brigham and Women's Hospital, Channing Laboratory and Department of Infection Control, Harvard Medical School, and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Boston, MA 02115, USA. sshuang@partners.org
The Journal of Infectious Diseases
|January 6, 2007
Summary
Routine surveillance cultures significantly improve the detection of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) infections in hospitals. Accurate patient counts prevent underestimating VRE incidence, crucial for infection control.
Area of Science:
- Infectious Diseases
- Hospital Epidemiology
- Clinical Microbiology
Background:
- Rising vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) infections necessitate better understanding of reservoirs and accurate epidemiological measures.
- Current assessments often underestimate VRE incidence by including prevalent carriers in at-risk populations.
- Routine surveillance cultures offer a method to improve VRE prevalence and incidence estimates.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the benefits of admission and weekly surveillance cultures in detecting unrecognized VRE.
- To assess the range of improvement in VRE detection across diverse patient-care units.
- To determine the impact of using accurate at-risk populations for incidence calculations.
Main Methods:
- Retrospective cohort study design.
- Inclusion of accurate at-risk populations for analysis.
- Evaluation of surveillance cultures (admission and weekly) in 14 patient-care units.
Main Results:
- Admission surveillance increased VRE detection 2.2-17 fold; medical units had higher VRE carrier admission rates.
- Weekly surveillance increased VRE detection 3.3-15.4 fold.
- Using total patients instead of at-risk patients underestimated incidence by one-third; surveillance prevented misclassification of 43% of incident carriers.
Conclusions:
- Routine surveillance significantly enhances VRE detection, with variations across units.
- Employing correct denominators is essential to avoid substantial underestimation of VRE incidence.
- Improved VRE detection through surveillance impacts infection control and patient management.
