Use of a temporary cohort ward as part of an intervention to reduce the incidence of meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in a vascular surgery ward

Summary This article describes the effect of introducing a cohort area into a vascular surgery ward where a sustained increase in new cases of meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) made the implementation of standard MRSA infection control precautions untenable. A recent review of published reports concluded, ‘that little evidence could be found to suggest that isolation measures recommended in the UK are effective’. The authors recommended a reporting format to enable the evidence for isolation to be gathered more systematically. This paper follows the recommended reporting format. The setting was a 30-bedded acute and subacute vascular surgery ward within a tertiary care hospital in Glasgow, UK. The data were analysed as an interrupted time series of 19 months pre-cohort, eight months with cohort and eight months post cohort. Following the instigation of the cohort area, there was a significant reduction in the number of nosocomial MRSA isolates from patients ( P  = 0.0005). This reduction was sustained after the cohort area was discontinued. In conclusion, effective separation of MRSA-colonized/-infected patients from patients who are not colonized/infected with MRSA, using a cohort area, resulted in a significant reduction in MRSA cross-colonization and cross-infection. The resulting reduction in MRSA prevalence within the unit facilitated effective screening and isolation of subsequent patients once the cohort area had been discontinued.