Checklist to Prevent MRSA Surgical Site Infections

Patients with known positive MRSA or MSSA and patients who have unknown status will decolonize BID x 5 days

"Patients that are MRSA or MSSA positive or have unknown status will bathe in CHG daily x 5 days.~Patients that are MRSA or MSSA negative will bathe with CHG the night before and morning of surgery."

All patients will receive Cefazolin during surgery

Patients who are positive for MRSA, or have unknown MRSA status, will receive vancomycin along with cefazolin during surgery.

The purpose of this research is to evaluate a SSI checklist. This checklist includes decolonizing a patient's nose and skin and optimizing antibiotics prior to surgery. At the time that we wrote it, the predominate product to decolonize patient's noses was mupirocin. However, in 2017, an FDA final monograph stated that nasal povidone-iodine may be used for pre-surgical decolonization. Nasal povidone-iodine should be able to overcome barriers to checklist implementation that we identified in Aim 3. We now plan to replace the nasal agent mupirocin with the nasal agent povidone-iodine at 3 participating medical centers (Iowa City VA, Minneapolis VA and Portland VA) to assess whether this overcomes the barriers to our SSI checklist.