Transmission-Based Precautions for Multidrug-Resistant Organisms: What to Prioritize When Resources Are Limited

Isolation precautions are infection control precautions intended to be used in healthcare settings to decrease the probability of transmission of multidrug-resistant pathogens through the hands of healthcare workers. It consists of the use of gown and gloves when touching the patient or his surroundings. The effectiveness of isolation precaution could be enhanced by the use of surveillance cultures which are cultures collected for the identification of colonized patients who had not been identified previously. To guarantee its cost-effectiveness, it is important to apply contact precautions in situations where the patient is colonized by an epidemiologically important pathogen for each specific setting. An excessive adoption of contact precautions could increase costs, banalize the intervention, and end up reaching low compliance rates by healthcare workers (HCW).