Ventilator-associated pneumonia

Use of Ventilator Bundle and Staff Education to Decrease Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia in Intensive Care Patients

BACKGROUND

Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), one of the most common hospital-acquired infections, has a high mortality rate.

OBJECTIVES

To evaluate the incidence of VAP in a multidisciplinary intensive care unit and to examine the effects of the implementation of ventilator bundles and staff education on its incidence.

METHODS

A 24-month-long before/after study was conducted, divided into baseline, intervention, and postintervention periods. VAP incidence and rate, the microbiological profile, duration of mechanical ventilation, and length of stay in the intensive care unit were recorded and compared between the periods.

RESULTS

Of 1097 patients evaluated, 362 met the inclusion criteria. The baseline VAP rate was 21.6 per 1000 ventilator days. During the postintervention period, it decreased to 11.6 per 1000 ventilator days (P = .01). Length of stay in the intensive care unit decreased from 36 to 27 days (P = .04), and duration of mechanical ventilation decreased from 26 to 21 days (P = .06).

CONCLUSIONS

VAP incidence was high in a general intensive care unit in a Greek hospital. However, implementation of a ventilator bundle and staff education has decreased both VAP incidence and length of stay in the unit.

Reduction of Endotracheal Tube Biofilms Using Antimicrobial Photodynamic Therapy

BACKGROUND: Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is reported to occur in 12 to 25% of patients who require mechanical ventilation with a mortality rate of 24 to 71%. The endotracheal (ET) tube has long been recognized as a major factor in the development of VAP since biofilm harbored within the ET tube become dislodged during mechanical ventilation and have direct access to the lungs. The objective of this study was to demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of a non-invasive antimicrobial photodynamic therapy (aPDT) treatment method of eradicating antibiotic resistant biofilms from ET tubes in an in vitro model. METHODS: Antibiotic resistant polymicrobial biofilms of Pseudomonas aerugenosa and MRSA were grown in ET tubes and treated, under standard ventilator conditions, with a methylene blue (MB) photosensitizer and 664nm non-thermal activating light. Cultures of the lumen of the ET tube were obtained before and after light treatment to determine efficacy of biofilm reduction. RESULTS: The in vitro ET tube biofilm study demonstrated that aPDT reduced the ET tube polymicrobial biofilm by >99.9% (p<0.05%) after a single treatment. CONCLUSIONS: MB aPDT can effectively treat polymicrobial antibiotic resistant biofilms in an ET tube.

Common complications in the surgical intensive care unit

Surgical and trauma intensive care units provide the facilities, resources, and personnel needed to care for patients who have been severely injured, present with acute surgical emergencies, require prolonged and complex elective surgical procedures, or have severe underlying medical conditions. Correcting the immediately evident physiologic derangement is only the first step in the care of these patients, because in many cases their prognosis and ultimate outcome will depend on whether additional insults accrued during their intensive care unit and hospital stay will prevent them from a full recovery. The nature, number, and complexity of the interventions used to provide advanced support requires a unique attention to the concept of patient safety, particularly when the population involved is that most vulnerable to injury and with the least amount of physiologic reserve to recover from it. The medical community, the public, and even regulatory agencies have focused on specific preventable complications that are common in surgical and injured patients, such as medical errors, healthcare-associated infections, and venous thromboembolism. Enough scientific knowledge has been obtained through well-conducted clinical trials to generate detailed evidence-based guidelines for the prevention and management of some of these pathologies, but still there are outstanding questions in terms of the applicability of the recommendations to the critically ill. In addition to clinical and technical expertise, performance improvement and quality monitoring activities provide direction for system solutions required to properly address many complications that are not provider specific.

Strategies to reduce mortality from bacterial sepsis in adults in developing countries

Sharon Peacock and colleagues discuss management of adult patients with sepsis in low- and middle-income settings, with a particular emphasis on tropical regions.

Using innate immunity to characterize the host response to microbial invasion in severe sepsis

Severe sepsis is a life-threatening systemic inflammatory response to microbial infection. Although mortality from severe sepsis has decreased modestly over the past three decades, its incidence is increasing dramatically. Current treatment of severe sepsis relies primarily on identification and appropriate antibiotic coverage of the invading pathogen, with supportive therapies aimed primarily at reducing the risk of associated organ injury. Current efforts to identify the invading pathogens are successful in approximately only 50% of patients with severe sepsis. In this review, we examine host-pathogen interactions through the Toll-like receptors and Nod signaling systems as principal mechanisms of the innate immune response, and explore the application of high-throughput genomic technologies that have permitted a more complete dissection of the innate immune response during severe sepsis. Early controlled studies suggest that these genome-wide tools can readily identify pathogen-specific host responses in macrophages and dendritic cells. However, despite considerable progress, clinical application of these approaches to pathogen recognition in hospitalized patients with severe sepsis is still years away.