Background: Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are emerging as one of the public health problems of concern in South Korea. To monitor and effectively control HAIs at the hospital settings, since 2006, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) has been operating Korean National Healthcare-associated Infections Surveillance System (KONIS) in collaboration with Korean Society for Healthcare-associated Infection Control and Prevention (KOSHIC). We analyzed characteristics and trend in HAIs from the report on nationwide surveillance system for healthcare-associated infections in intensive care units, 2011-2016.
Methods: Data on urinary tract infection (UTI), blood stream infection (BSI), pneumonia (PNEU) were collected from the ICU (intensive care unit) module of the KONIS between July 2006 and June 2016. The rate of HAI was estimated by the number of infections per 1,000 patient-days or device-days. Epiinfo software was used for the trend analysis of HAIs by comparison between two time periods(2006-2011 vs 2012-2016).
Results: The pooled mean rate of total HAIs decreased from 7.21 during 2006-2011 to 3.40 during 2012-2016, specifically showing 3.82 to 1.07 for UTI, 1.99 to 1.42 for BSI and 1.41 to 0.91 for PNU, respectively.
In device-associated infections, they showed similarly downward patterns: 4.41 to 1.26 for catheter-associated urinary track infections(CAUTIs), 3.11 to 2.40 for central line-associated blood stream infections(CLABSIs) and 2.11 to 1.38 for ventilator-associated pneumonias(VAPs).
Conclusion: It is suggested that strengthened measures for quality improvement of the infection prevention and control in hospitals would contribute to the significant decrease in HAIs.