Search Here

Use of disposable gowns and gloves by health care workers upon entering patients rooms on an ICU, helped reduce MRSA by 40 percent, a new research finds.

The use of gowns and gloves increased handwashing frequency among all other health care workers which subsequently did not result in any increase in adverse events. However the study did not show statistically significant results for preventing patient with another very common bacteria vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE).

"We set out to find whether having healthcare workers wear gowns and gloves for all ICU patient contact could decrease the acquisition of antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as MRSA without causing any harm to the patient – and the answer was yes," said the study's principal investigator, Anthony D. Harris, M.D., MPH, professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in a press release.

The study involved 20 surgical and medical ICUs across 15 states. Researchers also examined nearly 92,000 cultures from more than 26,000 patients over a nine-month period in 2012.

ICUs involved were randomly assigned either the intervention or control group.

"Infection control studies such as this are important to advance the science and lead to important discoveries that can decrease health care-associated infections," said Daniel J. Morgan, M.D., M.S., the study's senior author and assistant professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in a press release. "In conjunction with the evolution of hospital cleaning practices, increased handwashing frequency and other measures, patients in hospitals can be safer than they've ever been from HAIs."

The research is co-led by the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the Yale New Haven Health System Center for Healthcare Solutions.