Changes in hand hygiene compliance after a multimodal intervention and seasonality variation.

Background: Hand hygiene is the most important measure to reduce health care-related infections and colonization with multiresistant micro-organisms. We sought to determine the rate and seasonality of handwashing compliance in a university-affiliated hospital.

Methods: In January 2006 (baseline period), handwashing observation was first made in an intensive care unit.

The indoor air as a potential determinant of the frequency of invasive aspergillosis in the intensive care.

Invasive aspergillosis (IA) seems to be an emerging condition in intensive care units (ICUs). However, little attention has been given to the role of environmental factors that could increase the risk for IA in the ICU. The objective of this study was to determine the concentration of airborne fungi in three Brazilian ICUs, in an attempt to correlate fungal burden with the frequency of Aspergillus spp isolation from clinical samples of patients hospitalised in these units.

Hand hygiene, and not ertapenem use, contributed to reduction of carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa rates.

Objective: To evaluate the impact of ertapenem use in Pseudomonas aeruginosa carbapenem resistance, taking into account the volume of antimicrobial consumption, the consumption by the entire hospital of alcohol-based antiseptic hand rub, and the density rate of invasive practices.

Design: Before-and-after trial.

Setting: A tertiary care university hospital in southern Brazil.