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Impact of alcohol hand-rub use on meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus: an analysis of the literature.
J Hosp Infect. 2010 Jan 8;
Authors: Sroka S, Gastmeier P, Meyer E
We aimed to evaluate the impact of alcohol hand disinfection with alcohol hand rub (AHR) as surrogate parameter of compliance or with compliance observations on the meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) situation in hospital settings. Medline was searched for the keywords 'hand hygiene', 'compliance', 'disinfection', 'time series analysis' combined with 'meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus/MRSA'. Data were included only from studies reporting exact numbers of AHR and/or compliance observations of MRSA situations over time. The literature search resulted in 272 hits, of which 12 studies met the inclusion criteria. The amount of AHR ranged between 3 and 78mL/patient-day (pd) at the beginning and increased to 12 to 103mL/pd at the end of the intervention studies. Compliance with hand disinfection ranged between 20% and 64% at the beginning and between 42% and 71% at the end. An increase in AHR correlated significantly with an improvement in the MRSA situation (r=0.78), whereas there was no such correlation between compliance and MRSA. An increased consumption of AHR was associated with a significant reduction of MRSA rates.
PMID: 20061061 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]