Point Prevalence Survey of Nosocomial Infections in University Hospital in Martin

Nosocomial infections (NI) are a serious problem not only in Slovakia but in all countries. The European Commission decided on their standardized surveillance in the whole European Union. According methodology elaborated by experts from the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) in Stockholm we performed a point prevalence survey in the University Hospital Martin (UHM). In this article we present the results which show that the prevalence of NI in UHM (5.5%) is comparable with the average in other European hospitals. In comparison with occurrence of NI (0.64%) reported through the Epidemiological Information System of the Slovak Republic, our results are 8.5-times higher. The highest point prevalence of NI was found at the Clinic of Hematology and Transfusiology - 7 patients (out of 15 hospitalized) which is 46.7%. The most common type of NI was sepsis (25.9%) and urological infection (22.2%). Based on the results obtained we recommend to continue in international projects of NI surveillance, so that it would be possible to acquire more accurate data on NI prevalence in UHM and do the benchmarking among hospitals in countries of the European Union.