Incidence of Nosocomial Infections in a Big University Affiliated Hospital in Shiraz, Iran: A Six-month Experience

Background: nosocomial infections (nis) are one of the mostimportant health issues, particularly in developing countries,because these infections cause high mortality and morbidity, andeconomic and human resource loss as a consequence. to date, mostsurveillance studies have been conducted in developed countries,and only a few have been performed in iran. all of the few iranianstudies have been performed using paper-based collection forms,and none was conducted with the aid of an electronic patient dataretrieving and collecting tool. the aim of this study is to determinethe incidence of nis in a big university hospital of shiraz, withthe help of specifically programmed surveillance software mergingelectronically the available patient data and the infection resultsinput manually.methods: the study was conducted prospectively through 6 monthsfrom 21st march up to 22nd september 2006, in a 374-beddededucational hospital. all patients admitted during this period wereincluded in the study and examined everyday for detecting four typesof nis: surgical site infection (ssi), urinary tract infection (uti),pneumonia (pneu), and blood stream infection (bsi). centres fordisease control and prevention national nosocomial infectionsurveillance system criteria were applied.results: 4013 patients were admitted in the hospital. the overallinfection rate was 4.14, and uti, ssi, bsi, and pneu rates were 1.82,1.22, 0.5, and 0.5, respectively, per 1000 patient days of admission.conclusions: the results of this study showed that the frequencyof ni in the investigated hospital was not higher than in many otherreported surveillance results from other countries. this, however,might be a bias as the administration of antibiotics was very highin this study and the quality of microbiological investigation mighthave influenced significantly, resulting in more false-negative resultsthan expected. overall, the use of the iranian national nosocomialinfection surveillance system software proved to be useful andallowed both rapid data collection and detailed data analysis.