Courtesy of Becker’s Infection Control & Clinical Quality, here are 17 points from the CDC’s “Multistate Point-Prevalence Survey of Health Care-Associated Infections” for 2011.
1. In 2011, 4 percent of inpatients at acute-care hospitals had at least one HAI, totaling approximately 648,000 patients with 721,800 infections.
2. One in 25 patients will contract at least one infection during a hospital stay.
3. Approximately 75,000 patients with HAIs died during hospitalization.
4. Pneumonia and surgical site infections were the most common HAIs, each accounting for 21.8 percent of all infections.
5. Gastrointestinal infections accounted for 17.1 percent of all HAIs.
6. Urinary tract infections totaled 12.9 percent of all infections.
7. Primary bloodstream infections totaled 9.9 percent of all infections.
8. Approximately a quarter of all HAIs, 25.6 percent, were associated with medical devices, such as catheter-associated urinary tract infection, ventilator-associated pneumonia and central-catheter associated blood stream infection.
9. Approximately 43 percent of non-surgical site infections developed within 48 hours of a stay in the critical care unit.
10. Colon surgeries experienced the highest number of SSIs, at 14.5 percent, followed by hip arthroplasties (10 percent) and small bowel surgeries (6.4 percent).
11. The median interval from hospital admission to HAI symptoms was six days.
12. One in five HAIs was present on admission and was related to a previous admission to the same hospital.
13. The most common pathogen was Clostridium difficile, accounting for 12.1 percent of infections.
14. The majority of gastrointestinal infections, 70.9 percent, were due to C. diff.
15. Staphylococcus aureus accounted for 10.7 percent of infections.
16. Klebsiella pneumoniae and K. oxytoca accounted for 9.9 percent of infections.
17. Escherichia coli accounted for 9.3 percent of infections.