Infection
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Although an increase in burden of disease has frequently been reported for Clostridium difficile infection (CDI), specific data on the effect of CDI on a patient's risk of death or overall hospital mortality are scarce. Therefore, we performed a prospective cohort study to analyse the effect of CDI on the risk of pre-discharge all-cause death in all inpatients with CDI compared to all inpatients without CDI during 2009 in a single hospital. ⋯ The results of this study lead to the conclusion that hospitalized patients with CDI are--independent of age, sex and co-morbidity severity--2.74-fold more likely to die during their hospital stay than all other hospitalized patients. The eradication of CDI in the hospital could have prevented 1.72% of in-hospital deaths in our study population during the 1 year of the study.
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To analyze the impact of the International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium (INICC) multidimensional infection control strategy including a practice bundle to reduce the rates of central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLAB) in patients hospitalized in pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) of hospitals, which are members of the INICC, from nine cities of five developing countries: Colombia, India, Mexico, Philippines, and Turkey. ⋯ This study shows that the implementation of a multidimensional infection control strategy was associated with a significant reduction in the CLAB rates in the PICUs of developing countries.
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High-tech operations performed in cardiac surgery are associated with an increased risk of surgical site infections. In this study, we investigated if surgical site infections following cardiac surgery influence revision surgeries and patients' length of stay, and compared the results to German hospital infection surveillance data. ⋯ Surgical site infections resulted in revision surgeries with a significantly increased inpatient stay. However, this increase did not differ significantly from comparable German university hospitals.
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To establish the prognostic and discriminative value of the pro-atrial natriuretic peptide (pro-ANP) level in patients with severe sepsis or septic shock. ⋯ pro-ANP evaluated in severe sepsis and septic shock patients is a valuable prognostic biomarker, but, in contrast to PCT, which is routinely used as a diagnostic marker of severe sepsis and septic shock, it does not possess diagnostic and discriminative value.