Infection is a common and serious problem facing patients in intensive care units. A new study now gives doctors a snapshot of where, what kind and how frequent these infections are in ICU’s around the world.
Allen Tugadi is on a ventilator and in intensive care. This also puts him at an increased risk of developing an ICU infection. "There is an additional perhaps 10% to 15% mortality risk associated with acquiring an infection in the ICU. Therefore, strategies to try to prevent that, to treat it effectively and early assume a substantial degree of importance when you look at this as a global health problem," said Dr. John Marshall from St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
Dr. Marshall, along with fellow international co-authors of the study, examined data from 1265 ICU’s, in 75 countries, over one 24 hour period in 2007.
The study, appearing in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association, found more than half of the over 14 thousand patients in ICU’s on that one day, had infections. "60% of the infections were pneumonia's, about 20% were infections inside the abdomen and about 15% were infections of the urinary tract,” Dr. Marshall said.
The study found that patients who stayed in an ICU seven days or more had an increased risk of also becoming infected. "One of the things that this study actually allows us to do, is to begin to get a sense as to how much of the burden of infection is an added burden on a patient who is already at risk of dying because of the under lying diseases that led them to be in the intensive care unit,” Dr. Marshall said.
The study also shows that countries in central and South America had the highest infection rates and more developed countries like Australia and New Zealand had the lowest rates.
