Screening for drug-resistant pathogens on admission

Is it advisable to perform screening tests for certain drug-resistant pathogens in patients admitted to a hospital? If so, who should be tested? Should we perform such screening tests in patients with a history of documented drug-resistant bacterial strain infection?

Mark Loeb: Absolutely. The idea basically is to look at patients who might be at higher risk for having acquired a multidrug-resistant bacterium: certainly patients who are from an area that is known to be endemic—outside of the country, for example—for a resistant organism, or patients who have been in a hospital before. Those types of patients are at higher risk, so they should be screened.