Each Day a Patient Is in the Hospital Raises the Risk of a Drug-Resistant Infection
Medical University of South Carolina researchers evaluated data from 949 cases of Gram-negative infections. They found that the percentage of those types of infections within a few days of hospitalization was about 20 percent, which increased for four or five days. At 10 days, it went up significantly, to more than 35 percent.
Gram-Negative Infections on the Rise
Gram-negative bacteria cause infections including pneumonia, bloodstream infections, wound or surgical site infections, and meningitis in healthcare settings. Gram-negative bacteria are resistant to multiple drugs and to most available antibiotics. These bacteria have built-in abilities to find new ways around antibiotics and can pass along genetic materials that allow other bacteria to become drug-resistant as well.
"At the very least, this observation argues against both unnecessary hospitalization and unnecessarily long hospitalization."
This is promising though-
Study shows nationwide declines in central line infections and ventilator pneumonias
"When you use devices such as these in clinical care it makes children more vulnerable to infections. Over the last several years in neonatal and pediatric intensive care units around the country, we began to pay attention to the high rates of hospital-associated infections. Complications from these infections are serious, including death and long-term neurological injury and they are also costly to the health care system. For all of these reasons, hospitals began to develop protocols to reduce hospital-associated infections. For this study, we wanted to see how effective these efforts have been nationally in reducing these infections."Yes, well if you could reduce your rates that much, you were just being sloppy. So all of us would like to thank all of you ever so much for finally bothering to make the effort to do your job correctly.
The study concluded that among the hospitals there was substantial decline in some infections during the investigation period. NICUs and PICUs both saw a 61 percent decline in central line-associated bloodstream infections. NICUs also saw a 50 percent reduction in ventilator-assisted pneumonias while PICUs rates dropped by 76 percent. Rates fell among neonates of all birth weights and among children.
"This is a success story of multidisciplinary teams coming together to think, 'how do we make health care safer for America's children?' Our study shows these efforts appear to have been successful in reducing harm and saving millions of dollars for our health care system."
