Healthcare-associated Pneumonia
Given the mortality, hospitals should be doing a lot more - Dian Baker
image by: Saurabh Singh
HWN Suggests
Fighting Pneumonia at the Hospital
The humble toothbrush can help prevent pathogens that enter the mouth from traveling down the esophagus and into the trachea and lungs.
You go to the hospital with a broken arm, then end up with a potentially lethal case of pneumonia. A recent study in the American Journal of Infection Control calls this scenario entirely too common — and one faced by more than just the most vulnerable patients, such as older people, in the intensive care unit.
“We found that pneumonia was occurring in all patients on all types of units,” says lead author Dian Baker, a professor in the School of Nursing at California State University in Sacramento. “We sort of thought the elderly, the very…
Resources
How clean is your hospital room? To reduce the spread of infections, it could probably be cleaner
Unknown to you, the last patient in your room had an infection caused by a multi-drug resistant pathogen (bug) – meaning the standard antibiotics can’t fight it. Unfortunately, research suggests if you are admitted to a room where the last patient had this kind of infection, you are significantly more likely to be infected by that same pathogen than if you were admitted to a room where the last patient wasn’t infected.
In Hospitals, Pneumonia Is a Lethal Enemy
Pneumonia is the No. 1 hospital-acquired infection in America and hospitals aren’t doing enough to fight it. The best weapon: a toothbrush.
Get ready for a future where antibiotics no longer work
Some pneumonia is becoming resistant to what's usually the last line of treatment available.
Healthcare-associated Pneumonia and Aspiration Pneumonia
This review focused on the definition, prevalence and role of aspiration pneumonia as a prognostic factor in published studies of HCAP and attempted to identify problems associated with the concept of aspiration pneumonia.
Healthcare-associated Pneumonia: Clinical Features and Retrospective Analysis Over 10 Years
Healthcare-associated pneumonia (HCAP) is associated with drug-resistant pathogens and high mortality, and there is no clear evidence that this is due to inappropriate antibiotic therapy. This study was to elucidate the clinical features, pathogens, therapy, and outcomes of HCAP, and to clarify the risk factors for drug-resistant pathogens and prognosis.
Hospital-Acquired Infections: Beating Back the Bugs
It is the ultimate paradox of American health care: going to the hospital can kill you. Every year nearly two million hospital-acquired infections claim roughly 100,000 lives and add $45 billion in costs; that is as many lives and dollars as taken by AIDS, breast cancer and auto accidents combined. And with antibiotic resistance rising steadily, those numbers promise to climb even higher.
How American Health Care Killed My Father
Over the next five weeks in the ICU, a wave of secondary infections, also acquired in the hospital, overwhelmed his defenses. My dad became a statistic—merely one of the roughly 100,000 Americans whose deaths are caused or influenced by infections picked up in hospitals.
IDSA Guidelines 2016: HAP, VAP & It’s the End of HCAP as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
The current guidelines recommend 7 days of antimicrobial therapy for both HAP and VAP. The authors conducted their own meta-analysis and found no difference in mortality or recurrence between long and short-courses of therapy.
Reducing Preventable Harm in Hospitals
Each year, in the United States, millions of patients are harmed while receiving care in hospitals. They get infections, experience adverse reactions to drugs, develop dangerous bed sores, or come down with pneumonia from the very ventilators meant to help them breathe.
Fighting Pneumonia at the Hospital
The big takeaway? Use your toothbrush — it could save your life.
ClinicalAdvisor
Healthcare-associated bacterial pneumonia (HCAP) represents the majority of cases in this category, and this terminology acknowledges the fact that many patients who acquire pneumonia outside the hospital are at risk for the more virulent organisms traditionally attributed to HAP and VAP.
Infectious Diseases Society of America
These guidelines are intended for use by healthcare professionals who care for patients at risk for hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) and ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), including specialists in infectious diseases, pulmonary diseases, critical care, and surgeons, anesthesiologists, hospitalists, and any clinicians and healthcare providers caring for hospitalized patients with nosocomial pneumonia.
MDEdge
Healthcare-associated pneumonia (HCAP) has emerged as a distinct syndrome. Though presenting from the community, its unique epidemiology, microbiology and outcomes attest to the influence of its victims' ongoing exposure to the healthcare system.
Rebel EM
This article is an updated guideline on the management of patients with hospital acquired pneumonia (HAP) and ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) based on evidence from systematic literature reviews
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