Epidemiology of surgical site infections after total hip and knee joint replacement during 2007-2009: a report from the VINCat Program.

The VINCat Program is a system for epidemiological surveillance of healthcare-related infections in which the majority of Catalan hospitals participate. It has a specific module for surgical site infections (SSI) surveillance. Primary hip and knee arthroplasties are basic indicators of the program due to their high frequency and the important morbidity of SSI of these sites.

Surveillance of surgical site infections in elective colorectal surgery. Results of the VINCat Program (2007-2010).

The VINCat Program is a standardized surveillance program of healthcare infections in Catalonia, Spain. This program includes monitoring of surgical site infections (SSI) of elective colorectal surgery. The aim of this study was to define SSI rates in colorectal surgery among VINCat hospitals over a period of 4 years.

[Changes in nosocomial infection control: new challenges and responsibilities for the infection control nurse].

The complexity of surveillance, prevention, and control of nosocomial infections has increased over the last decades, owing to reductions in the length of hospital stay, health care practice outside of the hospital (home care, day hospital care, long-term care facilities, nursing homes), the increase in the number of elderly patients, new and emerging diseases, multidrug-resistant pathogens, and the administrative requirements for accreditation. In this setting, infection control nurses are progressively assuming new responsibilities in addition to infection control, such as ensuring the safety of the patient, guaranteeing health care quality, and other tasks. In the light of these changes, professional organizations of infection control personnel have voiced the opinion that staffing for infection control work should not be based solely on the number of hospital beds, but also on the complexity of the tasks involved, which should be defined according to standardized criteria and infection control indicators.

[Usefulness of risk indexes for the prediction of surgical site infection in patients undergoing neurosurgical procedures].

Background And Objective: The use of risk indexes, originally developed in the US for the assessment of SSI risk, is an useful instrument that must be analyzed according to each specific procedure. The addition of other possible SSI risk factors, like the use of perioperative antibiotic prophylaxis, could improve the predictive value of these indexes. The aim of this study was to determine the SSI incidence rate for craniotomy in patients admitted to the Neurosurgical Unit of the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona (Spain), to assess the use of standard NNIS and SENIC indexes, and to assess the possible effect of the addition of a new risk factor (adequate or inadequate use of perioperative antibiotic prophylaxis) to these indexes.

[Central-venous catheter-related infections and intensive care unit organization systems (EPIC Study, Spain)].

Background And Objective: Central venous catheter (CVC)-related nosocomial bacteremia is an important problem at the ICU. The possible role of organizational factors, as well as health care workers experience, for developing these infections is not well known. We aimed to identify the possible relationships and differences between the health care process, organizational features of the institutions and the development of CVC-related nosocomial infections.