Prevalence study on health-care associated infections and on the use of antimicrobials carried out with the light protocol of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

Abstract

Prevalence surveys can be helpful to assess Health-care Associated Infections and antimicrobial use in healthcare settings, as well as infection control interventions. The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of both Health-care Associated Infections and antimicrobial use in acute care wards in the University Hospital of Sassari according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control light protocol. According to the case-finding algorithm, information was collected only if the patient had received at least one antimicrobial at the time of the survey or if the patient had an active infection associated with an acute care hospital stay. Data were collected over a span of a week, on a single day for every ward. The survey included 588 patients. A total number of 49 Health-care Associated Infections were observed on 43 patients with an overall prevalence of 7.3%. Urinary tract infections were the most common Health-care Associated Infection. The antimicrobial use prevalence was 44.6%. Results for microbiological investigation were available for 27 Health-care Associated Infections (55.1%) with 36 identified microorganisms. A total of 343 antimicrobials were administered, mainly for the treatment of an infection (57.4%). Combinations of penicillins, including beta-lactamase inhibitors, were the most frequently prescribed (35.0%). To our best knowledge, this is the first prevalence study carried out in Italy following the light protocol. This study suggests that the prevalence of patients with Health-care Associated Infections in our hospital is slightly higher than the one observed by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control point prevalence survey of 2011, and lower than the one observed in the last national survey of 2016. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control light protocol proved applicable in acute-care hospitals with high complexity of structures and particular distribution of wards in order to perform a point prevalence study more quickly, without decreasing its value and its comparability to other similar studies.