A prospective study of transmission of Multidrug-Resistant Organisms (MDROs) between environmental sites and hospitalized patients—the TransFER study

Originally published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, this study was designed to characterize the baseline and temporal profile of microorganisms on environmental surfaces of acute-care hospital rooms and on patients admitted to these newly disinfected rooms. The study sought to characterize the nature of bacterial transfer events between patients and environmental surfaces using 4 ‘marker’ MDROs: methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), Clostridium difficile, and multidrug-resistant (MDR) Acinetobacter baumannii.