CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- Doctors at the University of Virginia Health System have significantly reduced MRSA infections among surgical intensive care patients by using antibiotic cycling, a method of rotating drugs at regular intervals.
In a study published in the Sept. 3, 2008 issue of Surgical Infections, UVA researchers report that switching between two antibiotics, linezolid and vancomycin, every three months in the surgical ICU decreased the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection rate from 1.9 to 1.4 patients per 100 admissions. In-hospital mortality from surgical ICU-acquired MRSA infections fell from 3.8 patients per year to none.
Study data spanned six years, including the period before cycling began (1997 to 2001) and the period after it was instituted (2002 to 2003). The study's key focus was resistant gram-positive cocci, a subgroup defined as MRSA and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE).
"Before we began cycling, 67 percent of the Staphylococcus aureus infections in our surgical ICU were caused by MRSA," notes the study's lead author, Dr. Robert Sawyer, a professor of surgery and co-director of UVA's Surgical Trauma Intensive Care Unit. "Cycling reduced MRSA cases to 36 percent of that total."
