Background: It was shown previously that changing the design of a hospital neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) from open bay units (OBUs) to single room units (SRUs) was not associated with a reduction in Gram-negative multi-drug-resistant organism (MDRO) colonization rates. It was therefore hypothesized that colonization mainly occurs vertically, or through parents and healthcare workers, and not through environmental factors, and that transition to SRUs would not decrease the number of clusters of MDROs with an epidemiological link. To investigate this, core-genome multi-locus sequence typing (cgMLST) was applied on MDROs cultured from infants at the study hospital.
Methods: This retrospective cohort study included all infants carrying MDROs admitted to the NICU of a tertiary care academic hospital 2 years prior to the transition from OBUs to SRUs in May 2017, and 1.5 years after the transition (2018-2020).
Results: In total, 55 infants were diagnosed with MDRO carriership. Isolates were available from 49 infants for cgMLST. In the OBU period, one cluster involving four of 20 (20%) infants was identified, and in the SRU period, four clusters involving nine of 29 (31%) infants were identified. It was possible to make an epidemiological link in all four SRU MDRO clusters, but this was not possible for the OBU cluster. In the latter case, transmission from an environmental source on the ward seemed likely.
Conclusion: After transition to SRUs, there was no decrease in the number of clusters of MDROs with an epidemiological link, suggesting that nursing infants in an NICU with an SRU design is not, in itself, protective against the acquisition of MDROs.
Keywords: Multi-drug resistance; NICU; Unit design; cgMLST.
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