Major ArticleImpact of an educational program and policy changes on decreasing catheter-associated bloodstream infections in a medical intensive care unit in Brazil
Section snippets
Setting
The study was conducted in a 7-bed medical intensive care unit in the 1000-bed teaching hospital of the University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. All adult patients admitted to the 7-bed medical intensive care unit (ICU) between January 2001 and April 2002 (control period) and May 2002 and December 2002 were prospectively surveyed for CVC-BSI and included in the study. The rate of CVC-BSI was also evaluated during the following year after the educational intervention. The institutional review
Results
Surveillance for nosocomial infections has been carried out in the hospital since 1993. Three hundred sixteen patients were admitted to the medical intensive care unit during the 1-year preintervention period (January 2001 to April 2002) and 190 patients during the 8-month postintervention period. During the following year after the educational intervention, 266 patients were admitted in the study unit.
The entire unit staff answered the pretest questions (Table 1). The major problem with CVC
Discussion
Bloodstream infection is an important cause of nosocomial infection all over the world.1, 2, 3 However, few data have been published concerning Latin America.
In 1997, the nosocomial infection control committee at our hospital developed a CVC-BSI prevention guideline; however, the pretest and the preintervention observation period showed that compliance to the guideline was low. The pretest found major problems concerning skin preparation during CVC insertion, disinfection of CVC during
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