Speciality specific healthcare-associated infection surveillance over a decade in a tertiary care teaching hospital, South India

Background: Active and robust surveillance of health care associated infections improves the quality of healthcare.Large scale study over a decade provides a more reliable data which serves as a benchmark for intra and inter hospital comparisons.Materials and Methods: This prospective observational study was conducted over a period of ten years covering 530539 patient days, in a large tertiary care teaching hospital incorporating the NHSN/CDC surveillance guidelines.Device associated infection rates were compared with the device utilization ratio. Results:The overall CLABSI rate, CAUTI rate and VAE rate were found to be 10.19, 2.51 and 11.39 per 1000 device days respectively.All the device associated infections were high in medicine ICU whereas surgical site infection was higher in surgical ICU.Positive correlation was observed between device associated infections and device utilization ratio.Conclusion: Active surveillance system is required in every hospital to track the hospital acquired infections on a daily basis which further helps in implementing control measures at the earliest.Speciality specific surveillance system gives a more accurate measure of the hospital acquired infections in that particular location, aiding in bringing about appropriate behavioural changes towards infection control in the targeted location.