Prevalence of infection The four studies surveyed 26937 patients. Table II outlines the patient characteristics and the corresponding NI frequencies. There was a total of 1934 Nis in 1667 patients. Thus, the prevalence of patients with NI was 6.2% (95% confidence interval: 5.9–6.5) and the prevalence of infection was 7.2% (6.9–7.5). The prevalence of infection varied from 1.4% to 16.5% between hospitals. Figure1 shows the prevalence per period. In October 2007, the prevalence was significantly lower than in other periods. The distribution of hospitals or infection types did not seem to explain the observed differences (data not shown).The nine hospitals that participated in all four periods had a comparable trend (data not shown). The four major NIs, i.e. SSI, pneumonia, primary BSI and symptomatic UTI accounted for 70.3% of all NIs. Table III gives the prevalence per type. Secondary bloodstream infection occurred in 0.5% of patients and originated from symptomatic UTI (20%), SSI (36%), pneumonia (10%) and other infection types (33%). The prevalence of infections on the ICU was 25.5%, the prevalence of pneumonia 9.9%, primary BSI 2.4%, symptomatic UTI 2.2% and SSI 8.6%. In other clinical areas the prevalence of infection was 6.2%; pneumonia 0.6%, primary BSI 0.4%, symptomatic UTI 1.7% and SSI 4.5%. Among the patients with NI, 1443 (86.6%) had one infection, 187 (11.2%) had two, and 37 (2.2%) had three or four. The median length of stay before the day of the survey was six days for all patients, and for those patients without NI. It was 19 days for patients with NI. On admission, 3.3% of the patients had an NI of which 65.2% were acquired in the same hospital. Of these, SSI was the most common infection type (75.1%). Device use Data on the use of medical devices and NI are outlined in Table II. In 36.9% of patients one device was present, 12.2% had two, and 5.3% had three to six. The presence of a urinary catheter varied between hospitals from 10.2% to 28.6%, CVC from 1.7% to 18.6%, invasive ventilator assistance from 0% to 6.3% and peripheral catheter use from 26.2% to 56.4%. Antibiotic use On the day of the survey, 30.9% of patients were receiving anti‐infectives. This ranged between hospitals from 20.7% to 42.9%. Of the patients with NI, 71.9% were on antibiotics, and for those without NI, 28.8%. Antibiotic use in the ICU was 56.9% and 29.6% outside the ICU. 5 95 Prevalence of nosocomial infections: first four national studies
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