This study in the Islamic Republic of Iran aimed to determine whether metoclopramide can prevent nosocomial pneumonia in the intensive care unit (ICU). Of 220 patients admitted to the surgical ICU who had a nasogastric tube for more than 24 hours, 68 case patients received oral metoclopramide (10 mg every 8 hours) and 152 control patients did not. Similar proportions of cases and controls devel...

During the past two decades, antibiotic resistance among nosocomial pathogens has gone from bad to worse. According to intensive care unit (ICU) data from U.S. hospitals participating in the National Nosocomial Infections Surveillance System of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the year 2000, 55% of nosocomial Staphylococcus aureus isolates were resistant to methicillin, 26%...

Positive blood cultures in very low birthweight or preterm infants usually reflect bacteraemia, septicaemia, or failure of asepsis during sampling and lead to increased costs and length of stay. Rates of nosocomial, or hospital acquired, bacteraemia may therefore be important indicators of neonatal unit performance, if comparisons are adjusted for differences in initial risk. In a preliminary s...

The rate of nosocomial bacteremia due to Staphylococcus aureus has increased over the past decade, but trends in community-acquired S. aureus bacteremia are less certain. This hospital-based observational study compares nosocomial and community-acquired S. aureus bacteremias during 1980-1983 and 1990-1993. The rate of nosocomial S. aureus bacteremia increased from 0.75 to 2.80 cases per 1,000 d...

OBJECTIVES To assess the relationship between organisational and structural factors of UK neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) with risk adjusted probable nosocomial bacteraemia. DESIGN OF STUDY A prospective observational study of infants concurrently admitted to 54 randomly selected UK NICUs between March 1998 and April 1999. RESULTS Of the 13 334 infants admitted, 402 (2.97%) had probab...

The proportion of nosocomial infections potentially preventable under routine working conditions remains unclear. We performed a systematic review to describe multi-modal intervention studies, as well as studies assessing exogenous cross-infection published during the last decade, in order to give a crude estimate of the proportion of potentially preventable nosocomial infections. The evaluatio...

OBJECTIVES To determine whether red blood cell transfusion is similarly associated with nosocomial infections in pediatric intensive care unit patients and whether reduced lymphocyte numbers is a possible mechanism. In adult studies, red blood cell transfusions are associated with nosocomial infections. DESIGN Historical cohort study. SETTING Single-center, mixed medical-surgical, closed pe...

BACKGROUND Nosocomial infections are an important public health problem in many developing countries, particularly in the intensive care unit (ICU). Limited data exists on the incidence and burden of nosocomial infection in the ICU in Argentina. METHODS We performed baseline prospective nosocomial infection surveillance of all patients for 6 months in 3 medical-surgical ICUs (MS-ICUs) in Arge...

INTRODUCTION Nosocomial pneumonia is a significant cause of in-hospital morbidity and mortality. Oral care interventions have great potential to reduce the occurrence of nosocomial pneumonia. Studies using topical antiseptic agents yielded mixed results. We hypothesized that the use of chlorhexidine for oral decontamination would reduce the incidence of nosocomial pneumonia in patients requirin...

BACKGROUND Risk factors for nosocomial pneumonia, such as gastro-oesophageal reflux and subsequent aspiration, can be reduced by semirecumbent body position in intensive-care patients. The objective of this study was to assess whether the incidence of nosocomial pneumonia can also be reduced by this measure. METHODS This trial was stopped after the planned interim analysis. 86 intubated and m...