Summary: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has spread to all parts of the world.
Effective control measures are dependent on a thorough knowledge of the organism’s epidemiology which
requires a typing technique that can be universally applied. Many typing methods have been developed for
MRSA but none has been adopted as the internationally recognized standard. This review summarizes the
information available on each in order to assess their suitability as a reference procedure. The majority of
phenotypic and genotypic techniques are not sufficiently discriminatory, reproducible, stable or useful in an
outbreak to be acceptable. The methods which do fulfil these requirements and have a potential for standardization,
such as pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, binary typing or a combination of more rapid techniques,
require further systematic evaluation