Why is the difference between colonization and infection important for VRE screening?
Infected patients carry VRE and show clinical signs or symptoms of disease. Colonized patients carry VRE but do not have clinical signs or symptoms of infection. This distinction is important in VRE screening. Patients are usually colonized in the gastrointestinal tract and occasionally in the urinary tract. VRE colony counts are similar in the stool of colonized or infected patients. If a hospital VRE rate is based solely on VRE isolated from clinical cultures (infected patients), the facility may be adequately reporting its infection rate, but may be underestimating the true burden (and therefore potential transmissibility) of VRE in the facility. Screening for patients colonized by VRE provides information about potential sources of illness. The goal of screening is to identify as many colonized patients as possible so that infection control measures can be implemented to decrease transmission and reduce the number of patients infected with VRE.
