The epidemiological characteristics of nosocomial infections among patients requiring chronic hemodialysis, a high-risk and rapidly growing population, have not been fully elucidated. During a 30-month cohort study, rates of bloodstream infections (BSIs), urinary tract infections (UTIs), pneumonia, and diarrhea caused by Clostridium difficile and the distribution of pathogens among hospitalized...

The increase in the number of elderly individuals has a direct impact on the health system with hospitalization complications such as hospital infection (HI). The objective of this study is to characterize and evaluate the cost of HI among the elderly in a public hospital for the elderly. Descriptive, cross-sectional research was conducted. Elderly individuals with HI in 2010 comprised the popu...

This chapter will not dwell on how mathematical models are built, better covered elsewhere (Bailey, 1975; Renshaw, 1991; Scott & Smith, 1994; Coen, 2007). It will focus on the impact of mathematical models on the understanding of infections spread in hospitals and their control. Hospital Acquired Infections (HAIs) made their first appearance with the invention of hospitals, mostly associated wi...

Enterococci have caused infections in hospitalized patients for many decades. Given that they were part of the normal flora of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and that they frequently appeared as part of the flora in infections related to fecal contamination, they originally were considered endogenous pathogens of little nosocomial import This view began to change with the appearance of enteroc...

To the Editor: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is one of the most frequently isolated bacterial pathogens in nosocomial infections. MRSA strains recently have emerged that show reduced susceptibility to vancomycin, including vancomycin-resistant S aureus (VRSA), vancomycin-intermediate S aureus (VISA), and S aureus heterogeneously resistant to vancomycin (heterogeneously resi...

Cross infection has been a problem throughout the ages wherever the sick have been housed. It was particularly rife in some of the larger hospitals of Europe in the centuries before Lister, making all but the most imperative operations unthirljable. Pare in the sixteenth century complained that infection at the Hotel Dieu in Paris was so frightful that no operation could rightly be contemplated...

Understanding the origins, treatment, prevention, and outcomes of nosocomial bloodstream infections (BSIs) is of utmost importance because they are one of the most frequent and severe infectious complications of hospitalization and medical care. The outcomes of BSIs may differ depending on patient factors including underlying conditions and immune status; organism factors including virulence an...

OBJECTIVES: To report the pooled results of seven prevalence surveys of hospital-acquired infections conducted between November 1996 and November 1999, and to use the data to predict the cumulative incidence of hospital-acquired infections in the same patient group. DESIGN: The summary and modeling of data gathered from the routine surveillance of the point prevalence of hospitalacquired infect...

In this issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, three articles report various aspects of the costs associated with nosocomial infections. Hollenbeak et al. use four different statistical methods to determine the impact of nonrandom selection on the attributable cost of surgical-site infection (SSI) following coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. In this study, they analyzed...