These guidelines, written for clinicians, contains evidence-based recommendations for the prevention of hospital acquired infections.
Hospital acquired infections are a major cause of mortality and morbidity and provide challenge to clinicians. Measures of infection control include identifying patients at risk of nosocomial infections, observing hand hygiene, following standard precautions to reduce transmission and strategies to reduce VAP, CR-BSI, CAUTI. Environmental factors and architectural lay out also need to be emphasized upon. Infection prevention in special subsets of patients - burns patients, include identifying sources of organism, identification of organisms, isolation if required, antibiotic prophylaxis to be used selectively, early removal of necrotic tissue, prevention of tetanus, early nutrition and surveillance. Immunodeficient and Transplant recipients are at a higher risk of opportunistic infections. The post transplant timetable is divided into three time periods for determining risk of infections. Room ventilation, cleaning and decontamination, protective clothing with care regarding food requires special consideration. Monitoring and Surveillance are prioritized depending upon the needs. Designated infection control teams should supervise the process and help in collection and compilation of data. Antibiotic Stewardship Recommendations include constituting a team, close coordination between teams, audit, formulary restriction, de-escalation, optimizing dosing, active use of information technology among other measure. The recommendations in these guidelines are intended to support, and not replace, good clinical judgment. The recommendations are rated by a letter that indicates the strength of the recommendation and a Roman numeral that indicates the quality of evidence supporting the recommendation, so that readers can ascertain how best to apply the recommendations in their practice environments.
Written by:
Mehta Y, Gupta A, Todi S, Myatra S, Samaddar DP, Patil V, Bhattacharya PK, Ramasubban S. Are you the author?
Institute of Critical Care and Anesthesiology, Medanta- The Medicity, Gurgaon, India; Critical Care, Medanta - The Medicity, Gurgaon, India; AMRI Group of Hospitals, Kolkata, India; Department of Anaesthesia, Critical Care and Pain, Tata Memorial Hospital, Dr. E Borges Road, Parel, Mumbai, India; Department of Anaesthesiology and Critical Care, Tata Main Hospital, Tata Steel Limited, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India; Critical Care, Chirayu Medical College and Hospital, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India; Critical Care, Apollo Gleneagles Hospital, Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
Reference: Indian J Crit Care Med. 2014 Mar;18(3):149-63.
doi: 10.4103/0972-5229.128705
PubMed Abstract
PMID: 24701065
