Health care-acquired infections in neonatal intensive care units: risk factors and etiology.

A 1-year prospective cohort study of health care-acquired infections was conducted at the neonatal intensive care unit of the University Clinical Centre Kragujevac, Serbia. The incidence rate of neonates with health care-acquired infections was 18.6%, and the incidence rate of the infections themselves was 19.4%. The incidence density of the health care-acquired infections was 9.1 per 1,000 patient days. The independent risk factors for health care-acquired infections were birth weight, length of hospitalization, duration of mechanical ventilation, and Apgar score. More than half of all isolated microorganisms were Klebsiella-Enterobacter (39.3%) and Escherichia coli (25.0%).