[Hospital acquired pneumonia at the intensive care units. The active nosocomial infections surveillance programme of Polish Society of Hospital Infections].

Currently, the Polish Society of Hospital Infections is coordinating a national program of active surveillance of nosocomial infections. One of its elements is the control of hospital acquired pneumonia (PNEU) on Intensive Care Units. This paper analyzes the epidemiology and etiology of hospital acquired pneumonia (PNEU) at the Intensive Care Units (ICU). Surveillance was conducted by means of an active method of detection and registration of infections by the Infection Control Team (ICT) in cooperation with the unit personnel, in accordance with CDC definitions, during the years: 2002-2003 IN 8 Polish ICU -surgical, medical and mixed. A total of 11 587 hospitalized patients from ICU were covered by the program, with 191 confirmed cases of PNEU. The average cumulative incidence of PNEU was 5.6% (median 4.9%), incidence density of Ventilator Associated Pneumonia (VAP) on average reached 17.9 per thousand (median 18.8 per thousand); mortality of patients with PNEU totaled 12.6% and for patients on ventilator and with coexisting infections 15.0% and 20%, respectively--it wasn't high enough to be statistically significant. Dominant etiologic factors of hospital acquired pneumonia in patients with a risk factor were Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus(MRSA) comprised 21.1% of isolated S. aureus strains. The analyzes in this paper show that it's possible to effectively implement uniform methods of detection, qualification and analysis in relatively new settings at Polish hospitals, where tools of modern hospital epidemiology are only used since the mid 90-ties.