Molecular epidemiology tools in the management of healthcare-associated infections: towards the definition of recommendations

Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs) are an important cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide and have a significant economic impact for health systems. Molecular epidemiology tools have a central role in HAI prevention programs. In order to give an overview of their specific advantages and disadvantages we reported current and new molecular typing methods for HAI outbreak detection and epidemiological surveillance.