Osasun-asistentziarekin erlazionatutako infekzioen epidemiologia eta kontrola

Abstract

Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAI) are infections that occur while receiving health care in a healthcare facility. These infections do not only affect patients; it can also harm the healthcare professionals, other workers and patients' visitors. HAIs increase patient's morbidity and mortality rates, antimicrobial resistance and healthcare costs. The prevalence of HAIs in Europe is 5.7% (3.2 million) affected patients each year and 5.4% in Spain. The most frequent HAIs in Spain are urinary tract infections, lower respiratory tract infections or pneumonia, surgical site infections and bloodstream infections. Any kind of microorganism can cause these infections, but the most common are bacteria. Environmental cleaning of healthcare settings is fundamental and also precautions of healthcare professionals and patients are fundamental to reduce the spread of infection. Thus, for prevention and control of HAIs is important to apply measures to prevent and control such infections and to affect as few patients as possible. These measures break the chain of infection and are classified into four groups: standard precautions, transmission-based precautions, environmental measures and specific procedures to prevent infections. These precautions include wearing gloves, mask or gown; microbiological control of the air and water samples; food preparation control; vaccination and antibiotic prophylaxis. The World Health Organization emphasizes in the Clean Care is Safer Care program that effective hand hygiene is the single most important practice to prevent and control HAIs. Finally, the surveillance programs of HAIs and of infections-causing microorganisms can help to prevent their transmission and to choose the best treatment.