NOSOCOMIAL INFECTIONS IN THE INTENSIVECARE UNIT: TYPES AND RATES OF PATHOGENS

OVER A TEN-YEAR PERIODMarco Costantini, Anne Lucie Destrebecq, Elena Bignami, Marina Pieri, Giovanni Marino, Carla Molteni, Sabrina Zarantonello, Luca Fumagalli, Carlo Orlandi, Simona Silvetti, Natalia Agracheva, Alberto Zangrillo

Anestesia e Rianimazione, Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milan, Italy

IntroductionThe adoption of appropriate protocols for the prevention of nosocomial infections was shown to prevent up to 35% of hospital acquired infections. The hands of the people who work in the hospital, especially nurses and doctors, play a key role in the transmission of nosocomial infections, with the hospital environment itself playing only a marginal role.The aim of the study was to analyze the rates and types of pathogens isolated in our intensive care unit over a ten-year period.

Conclusion

Results

Methods

Twenty-eight percent of the 8153 microbiological examinations performed in the study period had a positive result with a pathogen isolated (see figure 1). Pathogens were most frequently isolated from samples taken from intravascular catheters, who had a positive result in 29% (as shown in figure 2). The predominant pathogens overall are presented in figure 3. Candida spp was isolated much more in blood samples (15%), and in deep tracheal aspirates (20%) compared to the average number of Candida spp isolation in the total of the microbiological examinations performed .

The frequency and rate of pathogens isolated in the microbiological samples in our Intensive Care Unit of the last ten years showed that isolation of bacterial strains is a common and clinically relevant problem. Furthermore, our results are consistent with those provided by Malacarne1 which performed a similar multicenter analysis on 125 italian intensive care units. Development of continous infection surveillance is strongly recommended to improve the clinical assistance to critically ill cardiac patients.

We retrospectively collected and analyzed the results of all the microbiological samples of the patients admitted to the Cardiac Surgery Intensive Care Unit of San Raffaele Scientific Institute from 2001 to 2010

1Malacarne P, Boccalatte D, Acquarolo A, Agostini F, Anghileri A, Giardino M, Giudici D, Langer M, Livigni S, Nascimben E, Rossi C, Bertolini G.. Minerva Anestesiol 2010;76(1):13-23.

References