A comparison of methods for microbiologic environmental sampling

Abstract We compared the effectiveness of 4 sampling methods to recover Staphylococcus aureus , Klebsiella pneumoniae and Clostridioides difficile from contaminated environmental surfaces: cotton swabs, RODAC culture plates, sponge sticks with manual agitation, and sponge sticks with a stomacher. Organism type was the most important factor in bacterial recovery.