evaluation of the prevalence of nosocomial infection in different wards of be’sat hospital of hamedan

Background: the nosocomial infections are the ones that arise between 48 to 72 hours after patient’s reference to hospital, shortly after hospital discharge, or 30 days after an operation. this study aimed to evaluate the prevalence of nosocomial infection in different wards of be’sat hospital of hamedan. methods: this prospective cross-sectional study was conducted (during april-july 2016) on admitted patients that suffered from nosocomial infections based on cdc (centers for disease control and prevention) criteria. during the time of the study, patients who referred to different wards of the hospital (except for the pediatric ward), showed clinical signs of nosocomial infection 48 hours after the admission. their tracheal, urine, blood, and surgical wound samples were transferred to laboratory for culture and identification of infectious agent. patients’ demographic information were encoded as confidential records, then, the data were analyzed using spss software. all ethical principles of the helsinki declaration were observed. results: out of a total of 10332 hospitalized patients, 266 (2.6%) of them acquired nosocomial infection of which 183 (69%) of them were males and 83 (31%) were females. the patients’ mean age was 58.14. there was no significant relationship between the age and the type of nosocomial infections (p=0.052). the mean period of hospitalization was 28.2 days. the most common nosocomial infection was ventilator associated pneumonia (vap) with 110 cases (41.3%) and the rarest of them was catheter associated-urine tract infection (ca-uti) with 23 (8.64%) cases. fifty-nine cases (53.6%) out of 110 vap patient cases survived and 51 (46.4%) of them died. the overall mortality rate was 30%. among 242 bacterial strains isolated, escherichia coli was the most common strain with a prevalence of 61 (22.9%). most of the death cases (57.9%) were caused by proteus nosocomial infections. conclusion: the high values of nosocomial infections and mortality in be’sat hospital represent a need to reinforce the preventive and control program on nosocomial infections. in future studies, in order for better presentation of nosocomial infection in terms of latest events, infection and organism type, and antibiotic resistance pattern, novel indexes like device utilization ratio (dur) and incidence density of device-associated infections (iddi) are suggested.