Nosocomial infections are infections that develop as a result of medical or surgical care and affect approximately 5%
of hospitalized patients. An astonishing 70% of these infections are caused by antibiotic-resistant
pathogens. Surgical-site infections account for more than 30% of nosocomial infections,
which represents a major risk for the nearly 42 million patients who undergo surgery
each year. Staphylococcus aureus is one of the principal causes of surgical site infections and accounts for nearly
30% of these nosocomial infections. Data have shown that patients with nasal colonization
of S aureus are at an increased risk for postoperative surgical site infection compared with
patients who are not colonized. Mupirocin, a topical antibiotic, can eradicate S aureus from the nasopharynx successfully when administered intranasally, which reduces the
risk of surgical site infections. There is considerable debate regarding the ideal
candidate for intranasal mupirocin: all surgical patients or only those patients who
have test results that are positive for S aureus carriage before surgery. A significant disadvantage to this latter approach is that
culture results may take 1 to 2 days or longer to obtain, a length of time that is
not practical for patients who undergo same-day surgery.
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Footnotes
☆Sponsored by the Office of Continuing Medical Education at Excerpta Medica and supported by an educational grant from GlaxoSmithKline.
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© 2003 Mosby, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
