[Surveillance of antibiotic consumption in hospitals: tasks of the Public Health Service]. / Surveillance des Antibiotikaverbrauchs in Krankenhäusern : Aufgaben des öffentlichen Gesundheitsdienstes.

According to the German Protection Against Infection Act (IfSG; section 23 paragraph 4, July 2011), hospitals and clinics for ambulatory surgery are obliged to establish a continuous monitoring of antibiotic consumption in their institute. The introduction of the surveillance of antibiotic consumption aims to contribute to an optimization of antibiotic prescription practices in order to confine the development and spread of resistant pathogens. The local public health authority is entitled to supervise the implementation of legal requirements in the hospital setting. The main aim of this article is to support local public health authorities in coping with this task by providing background information on the surveillance of antibiotic consumption and its role as a key component of antibiotic stewardship programs. Furthermore, criteria suitable for assessing the implementation of a functioning surveillance system are proposed. The possibilities and limitations of the activities of public health authorities in this context are addressed.

Reducing neonatal nosocomial bloodstream infections through participation in a national surveillance system.

A national nosocomial surveillance system for neonatal intensive care patients with a very low birthweight was set up in Germany in 2000 (NEO-KISS). Forty-eight neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) participated in the programme, which focused upon nosocomial bloodstream infections (BSIs) and pneumonia. Only data from NICUs participating for at least three years were included and the years compared. The relative risks and their 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated and a multiple logistic regression analysis performed to identify significant risk factors. Twenty-four units that met the selection criteria accumulated data for 3856 patients and 152 437 patient-days in their first three years of participation. The incidence density of BSIs decreased significantly by 24% from 8.3 BSIs per 1000 patient-days in the first year to 6.4 in the third year. In the multiple logistic regression analysis, BSI in the third year of participation was significantly lower than in the first year of participation (odds ratio=0.73, 95% CI 0.60-0.89). The year of participation was an independent risk factor for BSI but not for pneumonia. Our data suggest that participation in ongoing surveillance of nosocomial infections in NICUs, requiring individual units to feedback data, may lead to a reduction in BSI rates.

Use of multistate models to assess prolongation of intensive care unit stay due to nosocomial infection.

BACKGROUND: Reliable data on the costs attributable to nosocomial infection (NI) are crucial to demonstrating the real cost-effectiveness of infection control measures. Several studies investigating this issue with regard to intensive care unit (ICU) patients have probably overestimated, as a result of inappropriate study methods, the part played by NIs in prolonging the length of stay. METHODS: Data from a prospective study of the incidence of NI in 5 ICUs over a period of 18 months formed the basis of this analysis. For describing the temporal dynamics of the data, a multistate model was used. Thus, ICU patients were counted as case patients as soon as an NI was ascertained on any particular day. All patients were then regarded as control subjects as long as they remained free of NI (time-to-event data analysis technique). RESULTS: Admitted patients (n=1,876) were observed for the development of NI over a period of 28,498 patient-days. In total, 431 NIs were ascertained during the study period (incidence density, 15.1 NIs per 1,000 patient-days). The influence of NI as a time-dependent covariate in a proportional hazards model was highly significant (P< .0001, Wald test). NI significantly reduced the discharge hazard (hazard ratio, 0.72 [95% confidence interval, 0.63-0.82])--that is, it prolonged the ICU stay. The mean prolongation of ICU length of stay due to NI (+/- standard error) was estimated to be 5.3+/-1.6 days. CONCLUSIONS: Further studies are required to enable comparison of data on prolongation of ICU length of stay with the results of various study methods.

Correlation between the genetic diversity of nosocomial pathogens and their survival time in intensive care units.

Bacteria differ in their ability to survive in the hospital environment outside the human host. Species remaining viable and infectious have a higher chance of being transmitted, giving them a fitness advantage in hospitals. This differential fitness could be expected to alter the genetic population structure of bacterial populations in hospitals, and should be reflected by the relative abundance of several successful clones. The objective of this study was to test for a potential correlation between tenacity, i.e. environmental survival, and clonal abundance determined by the genetic diversity in different bacterial species from prospectively collected isolates of intensive care patients. A literature review was performed to identify mean environmental survival times for the most important pathogens in intensive care units (ICUs): Staphylococcus aureus, enterococci, Acetinobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Enterobacter spp., Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia. To determine the genetic diversity of the natural population of these species in ICUs, a prospective 18-month study was conducted in five units with median nosocomial infection rates. All clinical isolates were collected, and highly discriminatory DNA fingerprinting techniques were used to identify specific clones. A diversity index for each species was calculated as the number of distinguishable genotypes in the population divided by size. The correlation between survival times and the diversity indices for the individual pathogens was investigated using non-parametric methods. Although 21 studies were identified in the literature, only two were relevant. They showed median survival times between 1.5 days (P. aeruginosa) and 60.0 days (Enterococcus faecium). During the prospective ICU study, 1264 pathogens were investigated and simple diversity indices between 49.1 (Enterococcus faecalis) and 89.8 (E. coli) were found. A correlation between survival times and the diversity indices for the individual pathogens was found (correlation coefficient 0.821, P=0.024). Environmental survival may be an important factor contributing to the ecological fitness of some nosocomial pathogens in ICUs. Infection control measures should consider this finding.

Reduction of surgical site infections after Caesarean delivery using surveillance.

Since 1997, the Krankenhaus Infektions Surveillance System (KISS) has collected data on surgical site infections (SSIs) following Caesarean delivery (CD). The aim of this study was to determine whether surveillance and feedback of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) could reduce the infection rate after CD. Only departments that had participated in KISS for at least three years were included in the analysis. The CD infection rates of the first, second and third years of KISS participation were compared for significant differences. The relative risk was calculated for the first and the third year of KISS participation. Multi-variate logistic regression analysis was performed to detect significant risk factors for SSI after CD using the third year of participation as one parameter. Twenty-six of 52 obstetric and gynaecology departments met the study's inclusion criteria. In those 26 departments, 17,405 CD procedures were performed and 331 SSIs were recorded (1.9%). The SSI rate after CD procedures was significantly reduced in the third year of KISS participation (1.6%) compared with the first year of KISS participation (2.4%), with a relative risk of 0.63 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.48-0.82]. Logistic regression analysis confirmed that KISS participation over three years was an independent factor for the reduction of SSI rate (odds ratio 0.64; 95% CI 0.49-0.83). As shown previously for other types of HAI, this study demonstrated that continuous surveillance and comparison with stratified reference data could reduce SSI infection rates after CD.

[Incidence of transmission of pathogens in intensive care units. Results of the SIR 3 study]. / Inzidenz der Ubertragung von Infektionserregern von einem Intensivpatienten zum anderen. Ergebnisse der SIR-3-Studie.

The objective of this study was to determine the incidence of episodes of transmission of nosocomial pathogens and of those pathogens leading to nosocomial infections. Over a period of 18 months all patients from 5 intensive care units (ICUs) who stayed for more than 2 days were included in this study. Surveillance of nosocomial infections was carried out and all isolates of 10 of the most frequent pathogens in ICUs (indicator pathogens) were collected and typed. A total of 28,498 patient days and 431 nosocomial infections were observed (incidence density 15.1 per 1,000 patient days), among them 278 caused by 1 of the selected indicator pathogens. A total of 141 episodes of transmissions were identified, corresponding to an incidence of episodes of transmission of 5.0 per 1,000 patient days and 41 nosocomial infections were transmission-associated, corresponding to 14.5% of all nosocomial infections. The data of this study demonstrate that even in ICUs with average nosocomial infection rates, some nosocomial infections could be avoided.