Abstract

Healthcare-associated infections (HAI) represent one of the most common cause of infection and an important burden of disease. The aim of this study was to analyze the results of a six-year HAI point prevalence survey carried out yearly in a teaching acute care hospital from 2013 to 2018, following the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) guidelines. Surgical site infections, urinary tract infections, bloodstream infections, pneumonia, meningitis, and Clostridium difficile infections were considered as risk factors. A total of 328 patients with HAI were detected during the 6-year survey, with an average point prevalence of 5.24% (95% CI: 4.70–5.83%). Respiratory tract infections were the most common, followed by surgical site infections, urinary tract infections, primary bloodstream infections, Clostridium difficile infections, and central nervous system infections. A regression model showed length of stay at the moment of HAI detection, urinary catheter, central venous catheter, and antibiotic therapy to be the most important predictors of HAI prevalence, yielding a significant adjusted coefficient of determination (adjusted R2) of 0.2780. This will provide future infection control programs with specific HAI to focus on in order to introduce a proper prophylaxis and to limit exposure whenever possible.

Highlights

  • Healthcare-associated infection (HAI) is an infection occurring in a patient during the process of care, in a hospital or other health care facilities, which was not present or incubating at the time of admission, Healthcare-associated infections (HAI) can appear after discharge [1]

  • Even though it is difficult to draw conclusions from the comparison with similar studies because of the differences in patient populations, case definitions, and data collection, HAI represents a substantial disease burden considering that, from 2013 to 2018, there were 6263 patients enrolled in this study, 328 of which acquired a healthcare infection (5.24%)

  • To other logistic regression analysis conducted on this topic, the length of stay at HAI

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Summary

Introduction

Healthcare-associated infection (HAI) is an infection occurring in a patient during the process of care, in a hospital or other health care facilities, which was not present or incubating at the time of admission, HAI can appear after discharge [1]. HAI are among the most serious public health problems both in Europe and in Italy, representing the most frequent adverse event during care delivery and causing prolonged hospital stay, long-term disability, substantial additional costs for health systems, and unnecessary deaths [2]. Despite the existing body of evidence describing interventions that can substantially reduce the rate of HAI, a point-prevalence survey conducted by the ECDC, estimated that approximately 4 million. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 7724; doi:10.3390/ijerph17217724 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph

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