Background
Vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) are primarily opportunistic pathogens with
incalculable clinical significance. In addition, the effectiveness of isolation in
VRE is often not easily assessed. The goals of this study were to estimate the transmissibility
of VRE of patients with VRE bacteraemia to other hospitalized patients and to document
reliable epidemiologic data on all VRE cases in a large health care center.
Methods
A prospective survey on in-patients colonized and/or systemically infected with VRE
was conducted at a 2,000-bed tertiary care university hospital in Germany. All roommates
of VRE bacteraemia patients were analyzed. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis was performed
to assess clonal relatedness.
Results
16,507 Screening tests were performed on 9,258 patients, of which 560 tested positive
for VRE (6.1%). Nineteen patients also suffered from VRE bacteraemia, an incidence
of 3.4%. This cohort was multimorbid and had high rates of exposure to external risk
factors (eg, previous hospital stay prior to admission, 78.9%). The transmission rate
to contacts was low (3.5%). Contact time of negative contacts was significantly lower
than that of VRE-positive contacts (19.3 hours vs 72.0 hours, respectively, P < .006).
Conclusion
VRE bacteraemia was found exclusively in multimorbid patients, transmission occurred
seldom, and average contact time of positive contacts was very high. The risk of transmission
of VRE from bacteraemic patients to hospitalized contacts is low.
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: March 04, 2013
Footnotes
Conflicts of interest: None to report.
Identification
Copyright
© 2013 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
