MRSA bacteraemia in patients on arrival in hospital: a cohort study in Oxfordshire 1997-2003.

In an Oxford teaching hospital, there were found to be 479 patients with MSSA and 116 with MRSA bacteraemia admitted from the community. Among this group, which comprised 24% of all hospital MRSA cases, at least 91% had been in hospital previously; the median time since discharge was 46 days. About half of cases were in patients in whom MRSA had not been isolated before. BMJ 2005; 331:992.