Impact of health care-related infections in trauma patients

Abstract

Healthcare associated infections have an impact on the health of hospitalized patients and are reflected in high rates of morbidity and mortality. The aim of this descriptive study is to characterize the infections and evaluate their impact on trauma patient health at a University Hospital over a 1-year period. The results showed that the prevalence of infections in trauma patients was elevated (15.6%), affecting mainly males (80.0%), ages between 18 and 30 years (47.5%), more than 15 days hospitalization (78.6%), more frequent in blunt trauma (54.0%) and in burns (32.5%). The principal sites of infection were pneumonia (49.5%) followed by urinary tract infection (23.8%). The tracheal intubation and long-term vesical catheterization were significantly related to most pneumonias (60.3%; p<0.001) and urinary tract infection (77.3%; p<0.001), increasing the risk for such infections on 20 and 6 times, respectively. Sepsis occurred in 44.7% of patients. A wide range of microorganisms showed resistance to antimicrobials, and Acinetobacter baumannii (92.7%, p <0.001) and Klebsiella pneumoniae (70.5%, p <0.001) were the most prevalent. 28.8% of the patients evolved to death, and 96.8% of deaths were related to infections. The relation between infections and death was statistically significant in pneumonia patients (37.8%, p <0.001) and sepsis (54.2%, p <0.001). The association of infections with the death showed the negative impact of this health complication in trauma patients.

Keywords

• Infecção Hospitalar
• Sepse
• Epidemiologia
• Causas Externas.