MRSA screening Staphylococcus aureus 3 tests.
MRSA screening with special instruction for self-collection of fluid with 3 cotton swabs.
Am I carrying the MRSA bacteria?
MRSA PCR test: Take your own MRSA cultures with provided culture sticks.
Three tests must be submitted for MRSA screening.
One for a smear from:
- throat
- the nose and
- one from the perineum
People who have stayed or been treated in a foreign health care institution during the past 2 months are at risk of carrying the Methicillin Resistance Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) bacteria. This also applies to people who have been in a Dutch care institution where contact with the MRSA bacteria has been possible. People who professionally come into contact with live veal calves and/or pigs are also at risk of being carriers of this bacterium. MSRA is insensitive to most antibiotics and difficult to combat.
If you are a carrier of the MRSA bacteria, you do not have to be sick. However, you can unintentionally pass these bacteria on to other people and or patients. In healthy people, MSRA generally does not cause problems. Patients in a hospital have a lowered resistance due to surgery or treatment. This makes them more susceptible to infections caused by all types of bacteria, including the MRSA bacteria. Infections lead to potentially serious complications. In Dutch hospitals, therefore, the goal is to keep the MRSA bacteria out of the hospital (and nursing home) as much as possible.
Taking a culture can exclude possible carrier status. If the results of the culture test are negative (you are not a carrier), nothing else happens. If MRSA is detected in you (a positive culture result), follow-up examinations or treatments can continue as usual. The hospital will take extra measures to prevent the bacteria from spreading.
What is expected of you ? You will receive materials to collect your own cultures. You may take these cultures at home on the toilet or shower.
Before taking the cultures, you must not have showered or bathed for at least two hours beforehand, otherwise they will not be reliable
We prefer to take the culture as a nasal, throat and perineal (buttock) culture.
How do you proceed?
Open the packaging of the culture sticks and remove the stick without touching the cotton tip. Take the culture as described below. Then remove the cap from the tube and insert the culture stick into the holder. Finally stick the barcode on the tube mentioning nose 1 or perineum 2 if necessary
Nasal culture
Stroke the inside of both nostrils, rotate the stick five times in the nasal tip area. (Therefore, does not need to be as deep as for the coronation test)
Perineal culture
The perineum is the area between the anus and the vagina cq testicles. With the cotton tip, stroke the perineum several times.
Medical Laboratory Dr Stein & Colleagues.
Because the collection sets are vacuum packed, you must put the barcode stickers on the samples after collection yourself for identification of the study, because of the automatic handling, otherwise this study cannot be processed .
