Preventing Infections in the ICU

role. Although this is a matter of speculation, errors with the ascertainment of baseline VRE colonization are one possibility. Given the established relationship between antimicrobial exposure and the density of VRE colonization in the gastrointestinal tract, some patients with low levels of VRE may have been misclassified due to a false-negative baseline culture. 7 Compared with rates of MRSA, rates of VRE acquisition were approximately 2-fold higher in both groups, lending additional support to the possibility that some of the VRE “acquisitions” simply reflect false-negative screening tests. The investigators did not measure the effect of gloves and gowns on