Our study demonstrates that preoperative MRSA decontamination with chlorhexidine washcloths and oral rinse and intranasal povidone-iodine decreased the SSI rate by more than 50% among patients undergoing elective orthopedic surgery with hardware implantation. Universal decontamination using this low-cost protocol may be considered as an additional prevention strategy for SSIs in patients undergoing orthopedic surgery with hardware implantation and warrants further study.

Current clinical practice for the treatment of bartonellosis relies mostly on expert opinion and antimicrobial susceptibility data. Randomized controlled trials are needed in the field to compare different treatment options.

No abstract

We compared bedside polymerase chain reaction to culture for identifying Staphylococcus aureus in patients about to undergo surgery with hardware implantation. Patients were screened for S. aureus carrier status at the preoperative clinic and on the day of surgery. The sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values, and accuracy were calculated.