Abstract
Intensive care units (ICUs) are special areas in hospitals for patients with severe and life-threatening diseases. ICUs are of several categories, such as neonatal ICUs, cardiac ICUs, neurological ICUs, surgical ICUs, etc. The ICUs’ patients may show a high susceptibility for hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) depending on underlying disease, duration of stay and treatment. ICUs are considered potential reservoirs for (opportunistic) pathogenic microbial strains and the risk of acquiring infection in these hospital environments is higher than in others. Several studies show the role of inanimate surface and equipment contamination in the transmission of pathogens to ICU patients. The aim of this study is to describe the results of 124 sampling campaigns performed during 12 years of microbiological surveillance of five ICUs of different categories, for an overall number of 714 samples (232 from air and 482 from surface), to analyze their trends and to elaborate suggestions to improve ICUs’ environmental quality and patients’ safety.
Highlights
In this paper we describe the trend of environmental bacterial pollution observed in some Intensive care units (ICUs) of hospital buildings of the city of Rome (Italy), considering their activities, layout and structural characteristics, to evaluate changes in bacterial pollution among and within ICUs over time and to suggest preventive actions and design solutions to improve the hygienic standards and the safety of patients and healthcare workers
ICUs, air is supplied by a centralized HVAC system without air recirculation and running continuously, equipped with high-efficiency particulate air filters, with the exception of one of them (Neonatal ICU) which is equipped with a localized HVAC system
The sample distribution varied among ICUs and over time, depending on specific requests and problems occurred along the years
Summary
Among hospital’s wards, intensive care units (ICU) are one of the areas more involved in these challenges, since they are specialized divisions, which provide close monitoring and support to threatened or failing vital functions in critically ill patients who suffer from illnesses with the potential to endanger life, and perform adequate diagnostic measures and medical or surgical therapies to improve outcome [2]. These units include several categories: neonatal ICUs, cardiac ICUs, neurological ICUs, surgical ICUs, medical ICUs, etc. Each of them has different characteristics and requirements, depending on the type of patient and disease
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