Low prevalence of meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus carriage at hospital admission: implications for risk-factor-based vs universal screening

The low rate of HA-MRSA in the UK increases the relative proportion due to CA-MRSA, for which conventional risk-factor-based screening strategies may be less effective. Cost-benefit analyses of universal MRSA admission screening will need to take account of this new epidemiology.