Brief reportA prospective incidence study of nosocomial infections in a neonatal care unit
Section snippets
Setting and surveillance procedures
The NCU at the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu in Barcelona (Spain) is a level III care neonatal reference unit with a mean annual admission rate of 524 newborns. It has 11 beds for intensive care, 20 for intermediate care, and 10 for minimal care.
An observational and prospective study included all patients admitted to the NCU during 6 months, from May through October 2000. Each patient was followed-up daily from admission until hospital discharge.
Data were recorded in a predefined format of the
Neonatal characteristics
Two hundred sixty-eight newborns were included during the study period. The mean age at admission was 2 days (SD, 7.2 days). Ninety-two percent of the neonates were younger than 7 days old. The sex distribution was 40.7% for girls and 59.3% for boys; 46% (123 infants) weighed more than 2500 g, and 42.9% (115 infants) were born after 36 weeks of gestation (Table 1).
Epidemiology of NI
Sixty-five (24.2%) neonates had a total of 88 documented NI. Forty-four (68%) had only 1 episode, and 21 (32%) had 2 or more
Discussion
This study evaluated the incidence of NI in an NCU and found a rate of 32.7 infections per 100 admissions, in agreement with rates reported in the literature, which vary between 11% and 34%.3., 4., 10. These differences may be a result of the duration and methods of surveillance used.
The program for surveillance of nosocomial infections in Spain (PREVINE) was designed as a multicentric study for defining the epidemiologic profile of NI, and the predefined format used intrinsic risk factors
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