In Reply: We thank Hurley for his comments on our meta-analysis.1 However, we strongly dispute that our analytical technique is flawed, and argue that we have been extremely cautious in drawing our conclusions. Hurley's contention is that hospital length of stay before bacteraemia (LOS) is a surrogate for severity of underlying disease and risk for colonisation with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and that these factors explain the higher mortality in patients with MRSA.
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