One in every 25 patients who are hospitalized acquires Hospital Acquired Infections. This comes to 4%, persons who have to fight infections which have been picked up in any hospital or health care facility. These are the figures released by CDC or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in its latest survey.
This means there are more than 600,000 patients every year and among these 74,000 have to fight multiple hospital acquired infection. 50% of these infections are acquired from devices attached to the patient e.g. a ventilator or a catheter or any other attachment at the surgery site. Earlier the figure was 2.1 million in the 70’s and 1.7 million in the 90’s through 2002.
Dr. Mike Bell, deputy director of the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion at the CDC, said to Reuters Health “The trend, in magnitude, seems to be going in the right direction,”
In spite of increasing concerns about Hospital acquired infections and some of them of being resistant to antibiotics, there are no federal system which collects information about these secondary infections.
The latest study has been conducted by Dr Shelley S Magill. The analysis was based on 11,282 patients treated at 183 hospitals in 10 states. The survey was completed in the selected hospital during the course of the day and could involve as many as 100 patients per facility.
Pneumonia topped the list of hospital acquired diseases at 22% along with infections at the surgical site which was another 22%. 17 % of the hospital acquired infections were stomach or intestinal illnesses while UTI and Septicemia were ranked fourth and fifth.
Clostridium difficile, was the most common pathogen and was detected in 12% of the hospital acquired diseases and it also was the causative pathogen in 71% of the GI infections. The survey did not include any Nursing homes, emergency departments, rehabilitation hospitals and outpatient treatment center.
According to modest estimates in 2011, 648,000 hospitalized patients had to battle at least one hospital-acquired infection. The total number of infections was estimated to be 721,800. 34 million people are admitted in 5000 community hospitals in US every year. The latest study underlines the need to focus on infections which are acquired by contact with catheters in the bloodstream or the bladder, mechanical ventilation or surgical procedures
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