Effectiveness of Extended Infection Control Measures on Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Infection Among Orthopaedic Patients.

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to find the effectiveness of Extended Infection Control Measures (EICM) in reducing the rate of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection among orthopaedic surgery patients.
Methods: The study adopted a quasi-experimental design and was conducted in the orthopaedic units of a tertiary care hospital. This study recruited 168 orthopaedic patients and 154 healthcare professionals (HCPs). EICM included hand hygiene, decolonizing the patients and HCPS, staff education, feedback of surveillance data, treatment of high-risk and MRSA-infected patients, having separate equipment for MRSA-infected patients, and appropriate cleaning of patient's unit.
Results: The EICM effectively reduced MRSA infection from 21.2 to 6% (p < 0.001). It also resulted in improving the knowledge of HCPs in the prevention and management of MRSA infection (p < 0.001), and all colonized HCPs were successfully (100%) decolonized.
Conclusion: EICM is a promising intervention to combat MRSA infection among orthopaedic wards. Hence, it can be executed in orthopaedic wards, thereby improving the treatment quality and reducing the infection-related consequences. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43465-022-00713-5. © Indian Orthopaedics Association 2022, Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.