Venous thromboembolism is the most common preventable cause of hospital death, with surgical and medical patients at a significantly increased risk. It is estimated that, without prophylaxis, it occurs in 20% of general medical and surgical patients, and 40-60% of orthopaedic patients. It accounts for 25-times greater mortality than meticillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Despite ove...

The effective disinfection of hospital surfaces is recognised as an important factor in preventing hospital-acquired infections. The purpose of this study was to quantify the disinfection rate of a novel gas plasma system on clinically relevant biofilms. Clinical isolates of Staphylococcus epidermidis and meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) were grown as biofilms on glass surfaces...

To the editor: In their article titled ‘Livestock-associated meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (LA-MRSA) among human MRSA isolates, European Union/ European Economic Area countries, 2013’, Kinross et al. recently reported on the occurrence of LA-MRSA in humans [1]. The results were obtained by an ECDC initiated study documenting the identification of LA-MRSA (i.e. CC398 and ‘other’ LA-...

Heather Newton is a Tissue Viability Nurse Consultant at the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust and won the Innovations in a Reduction in Wound Infection award sponsored by Smith & Nephew at the 2009 Wounds UK Awards ceremony for the work presented in this paper Tackling healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) such as meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) continues to be a key safet...