Infection control and hospital epidemiology : the official journal of the Society of Hospital Epidemiologists of America
-
Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol · Sep 2012
Multicenter Study Comparative StudyCentral line-associated bloodstream infection surveillance outside the intensive care unit: a multicenter survey.
The success of central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) prevention programs in intensive care units (ICUs) has led to the expansion of surveillance at many hospitals. We sought to compare non-ICU CLABSI (nCLABSI) rates with national reports and describe methods of surveillance at several participating US institutions. ⋯ Only 2 hospitals were below the pooled CLABSI rate for inpatient wards; all others exceeded this rate. Possible explanations include differences in average central line utilization or hospital size in the impact of certain clinical risk factors notably absent from the definition and in interpretation and reporting practices. Further investigation is necessary to determine whether the national benchmarks are low or whether the hospitals surveyed here represent a selection of outliers.