We describe the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Nosocomial Infections Surveillance system. Elements of the system critical for successful reduction of nosocomial infection rates include voluntary participation and confidentiality; standard definitions and protocols; identification of populations at high risk; site-specific, risk- adjusted infection rates comparable across ...

Hospital-acquired (nosocomial) infections (HAIs) increase morbidity, mortality and medical costs. In the USA alone, nosocomial infections cause about 1.7 million infections and 99 000 deaths per year. HAIs are spread by numerous routes including surfaces (especially hands), air, water, intravenous routes, oral routes and through surgery. Interventions such as proper hand and surface cleaning, b...

OBJECTIVES We tested a previously published model for the analysis of the temporal relationship between antibiotic use and the incidence of Clostridium difficile infection in a hospital with stable incidence of infection at >1 case per 1000 admissions per month. METHODS The study period was from April 2004 to June 2008 and used data from Infection Control and Hospital Pharmacy. We first descr...

As pay for performance becomes more prevalent, hospitals struggle to improve processes, especially those for preventing hospitalacquired infections (HAIs). Many hospital programs seek out evidence-based “best practices” to keep patients safe from deadly and costly HAIs. Critical care nurses have begun examining even the most rudimentary tasks, such as bathing patients, and the processes inheren...

About 5% of patients admitted to acute-care hospitals acquire nosocomial infections. A variety of factors contribute: increasing age of patients; availability, for treatment of formerly untreatable diseases, of extensive surgical and intensive medical therapies; and frequent use of antimicrobial drugs capable of selecting a resistant microbial flora. Nosocomial infections due to resistant organ...

As part of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, Congress required the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to identify conditions that (1) are high cost or high volume or both, (2) result in the assignment of a case to a diagnosis-related group that has a higher payment when present as a secondary diagnosis, and (3) could reasonably have been prevented through the application of evidence-...

Introduction / objectives Official reports of Mongolia indicate that hospitalacquired infections (HAI) occur in 0.01–0.05% of all hospital admissions. This is considerably lower than internationally reported rates. There have been no published HAI prevalence studies from Mongolia. We aimed to determine the first accurate estimate of HAI prevalence in two tertiary hospitals of Ulaanbaatar and to...

BACKGROUND Hospital-acquired infections (HAI) are associated with increased attributable morbidity, mortality, prolonged hospitalization, and economic costs. A simple, reliable prediction model for HAI has great clinical relevance. The objective of this study is to develop a scoring system to predict HAI that was derived from Logistic Regression (LR) and validated by Artificial Neural Networks ...

This issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology contains multiple articles focusing on the clinical and public health implications of infections by extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Enterobacteriaceae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Acinetobacter baumannii and their resistance profiles to commonly prescribed antimicrobials. The first five articles in this issue add to a g...

This yearmarks the 150th anniversary of theuntimely death of Ignaz Semmelweis. His namemight be unfamiliar to many of you, but he was a pioneer of antiseptic policy whose recommendations revolutionized healthcare by limiting the spread of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). While working as a physician in Viennese obstetric clinics, Semmelweis observed that the incidence of puerperal fever (ca...