[Impact of nursing care on the incidence of invasive mechanical ventilation associated pneumonia].

Introduction: Training health care professionals on preventive measures of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) reduces the incidence of this serious adverse effect.

Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of the non-pharmacological, VAP preventive program by comparing the incidence of VAP in two periods: pre- and post- training of the nursing staff of the intensive care unit (ICU).

Material And Methods: A comparative, observational study on the incidence of VAP and related-risk factors. Two prevalence cutoffs were used: prior to training (from October 2007 to June 2008) and post-training (from October 2008 to April 2009). The statistical analysis was performed with the SPSS v.15 statistical program, t-test or Mann-Whitney test for continuous variables and Chi-square or Fisher test for qualitative variables.

Results: A total of 69 patients were included in the pre-training period and 71 in the post-training. Age and gender percentages were similar in both groups. There was a greater number of risk factor for VAP in the pre-training period that was statistically significant only in the case of diabetes (27.5% versus 8.4%; P=.004). There were no differences regarding the treatment administered to both groups or number of days in ICU or mechanical ventilation (MV) days. Decreased rate of 6.01 to 1.91 VAP/1.000 ventilator days in the post-training period.

Conclusions: Preventive measures reduced the incidence of VAP in two samples of patients comparable in terms of risk factors. Nursing education is directly related to the results in patient safety.