gms | German Medical Science

Introduction: Nosocomial infections are still a severe problem in our medical centres. Besides, the infections acquired in the hospital are connected with considerable consequences for the affected patient in which also the availability of potent antibiotics could change nothing essentials.

Method: During a 4-year period we collected the data of 4526 inpatients and the bacterial, resistance and resistance development were compared to the reference rates of the German Krankenhaus Infektions Surveilance System (KISS), the European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System (ERAS), the American Intensive Care Antimicrobial Resistance Epidemiology-project (ICARE) as well as surgical, internal and neuro-logical wards of the medical centre.

Results: In the examined patient's pool 110 infections, according to criteria of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which were classified as nosocomial acquired were found. It turned out an artificial respiration related pneumonia rate of 8.8, a primary sepsis rate of 1.7, a post surgical sore infection rate of 1.25 and a catheter related infection rate of 2.8. From our data arises that almost seriously ill patients developed nosocomial infections.

Our infection rates are below the average of the abovementioned big studies with raised resistance rate of the bacterial in comparison to other healthcare disciplines.

Discussion: By the widespread application of potent antibiotics we have created new problems by multiple antibiotic resistances. These reveal themselves above all with nosocomial infections, because in this context the use of effective antibiotics is the most important factor for the patient's outcome.