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Light The Night Walk is The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s evening walk and fundraising event. It is the nation’s night to pay tribute and bring hope to thousands of people battling blood cancers and to commemorate loved ones lost.
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Nosocomial infections are infections which are a result of treatment in a hospital or a healthcare service unit, but secondary to the patient’s original condition. Infections are considered nosocomial if they first appear 48 hours or more after hospital admission or within 30 days after discharge. Nosocomial comes from the Greek word nosokomeion (???????????) meaning hospital (nosos = disease, komeo = to take care of). This type of infection is also known as a hospital-acquired infection (or more generically healthcare-associated infection).
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About 2 in 3 Medicare beneficiaries who were discharged into the community following hospitalization in 2003 or 2004 were rehospitalized or died within a year, according to a recent New England Journal of Medicine article. Only 10% of the rehospitalizations were estimated to have been planned.
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Every year about 2 million patients develop serious infections as a result of hospitalization for an unrelated condition in the United States — about 1 out of every 136 hospitalized patients.1 Not only do these healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) exact an enormous toll in personal terms, but the financial cost also is staggering: our country spends $4.5 to $5.7 billion annually on the treatment of HAIs.1 According to estimates, preventing a case of HAI saves on average more than $10,000 and reduces the patient’s risk of death from almost 7 percent to 1.6 percent.2
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In a presumably sterile environment such as a hospital, diligence of staff washing their hands when moving from patient to patient can easily be taken for granted. Yet, according to The Joint Commission, handwashing failures contribute to healthcare-associated infections that kill nearly 100,000 Americans each year and cost U.S. hospitals $4 billion to $29 billion annually to combat. At Bay Medical Center in Panama City, Florida, Compirion Healthcare Solutions, a healthcare consulting firm that was engaged to help improve ED Throughput, Finance and Core Measures compliance, found only 30% of the staff regularly washed their hands between visits with patients.
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Healthcare-associated infections (HAI) exact a significant toll on human life. They are among the leading causes of preventable death in the United States, accounting for an estimated 1.7 million infections and 99,000 associated deaths in 2002. In hospitals, they are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. In addition to the substantial human suffering caused by healthcare-associated infections, the financial burden attributable to the infections is staggering. It is estimated that healthcare-associated infections cause $28 to $33 billion in excess healthcare costs each year.
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The term healthcare-associated infection (HAI) refers to infections associated with healthcare delivery in any setting (e.g., hospitals, long-term care facilities, ambulatory settings, home care). This term reflects the uncertainty in always being able to determine where the pathogen is acquired. Patients may be colonized with, or exposed to, potential pathogens outside of the healthcare setting before receiving healthcare, or may develop infections caused by those pathogens when exposed to the conditions associated with delivery of healthcare. Additionally, patients frequently move among the various settings within a healthcare system.
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CDC strives to understand how healthcare-associated infections happen and to develop appropriate interventions. A new report from CDC updates previous estimates of healthcare-associated infections. In American hospitals alone, healthcare-associated infections account for an estimated 1.7 million infections and 99,000 associated deaths each year.
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Healthcare-associated infections are infections that patients acquire during the course of receiving treatment for other conditions within a healthcare setting. Healthcare-associated infections are one of the top ten leading causes of death in the United States. As the nation’s health protection agency, CDC is committed to helping all Americans receive the best and safest care when they are treated at a hospital or other healthcare facility.
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Hospitals are meant to be places we go to get well, but some are becoming places where just the opposite occurs. There has been the fear of “super-bugs” for many years, and based on emerging reports, that fear may be becoming a reality. Microorganisms are evolving into stronger, more resilient pathogens that can withstand the health care industry’s full arsenal of antibiotics. As a result, hospitals run the risk of acting as a distribution center for the transmission of infectious diseases.
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No discussion of patient safety would be complete without covering the growth of superbugs: those infectious organisms that make patients sick, may cause death, and can’t be killed with known antiobiotics. They are known by names such as: Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Clostridium difficile (C.Diff), Vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE)
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Symptomatic treatment of shock, hypoventilation, and other complications should be provided, along with the administration of empiric broad-spectrum antimicrobials, antifungals, and antivirals. Infections caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are not worse than those caused by susceptible S aureus. MRSA requires treatment with different families of antibiotics. Although the pathogenicity does not generally differ from that of susceptible strains of S aureus, MRSA strains that carry the loci for Panton-Valentine leukocidin can be hypervirulent and can cause lymphopenia, rapid tissue necrosis, and severe sepsis.
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Cell phones used by hospital doctors and nurses are loaded with infectious microbes. Researchers found pathogens on 95 percent of the mobile phones used in operating rooms and intensive care units.
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A hospital-acquired infection is usually one that first appears three days after a patient is admitted to a hospital or other health care facility. Infections acquired in a hospital are also called nosocomial infections.
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It’s a paradox. People go into the hospital to get well. Yet, every year in the U.S. over 2 million of them go into hospitals and get sick with a hospital-acquired infection. The outcome can be deadly. Over 100,000 patients die from these infections each year – more than car accidents, breast cancer and AIDS combined – according to the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths (RID). And, they’re expensive. It’s been estimated that patients who contract an infection in the hospital stay an average of 20.6 days compared with 4.5 days for other patients, and their hospital stays cost six times more. The estimates for society as a whole range from $5 to $30.5 billion every year.
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Hospital-acquired infections tied to nurse staffing ratios | Press Releases | NYS Nurses AssociationWhen researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigated an outbreak of central venous catheter-associated bloodstream infections (CVC-BSI) at a Veterans Administration Hospital, they found that the high rate of infection corresponded to an increase in the number of patients per nurse. Their study, published in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, said that “a high patient-to-nurse ratio [is] and independent risk factor for CVC-BSI occurring in the ICU.”
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Hospital-acquired infections may develop from surgical procedures, catheters placed in the urinary tract or blood vessels, or from material from the nose or mouth that is inhaled into the lungs. The most common types of hospital-acquired infections are urinary tract infections (UTIs), pneumonia, and surgical wound infections.
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A hospital-acquired infection is usually one that first appears three days after a patient is admitted to a hospital or other health-care facility. Such infections are also called nosocomial infections.
About 5-10% of patients admitted to hospitals in the United States develop one of these infections, which are usually related to a procedure or treatmentused to treat the patient.
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HAIs are preventable. With proper infection control, such as hand washing, proper vaccination of staff and use of sterile techniques, hospitals can save lives and minimize economic losses. HAI control and prevention are complex, multifactorial public health issues.
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Patients who developed pneumonia while using a ventilator had the highest death rate, over 32%. Many times the transmission of these infections are a medical error caused by the negligence of a physician or other health care professional, a case of medical malpractice. Some health care providers report that to prevent ventilator-associated pneumonia cases, simple steps such as keeping the patient’s head elevated and ensuring the patient breathes independently for at least a few minutes each day can prevent an infection.
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The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that each year patients contract 250,000 infections from catheters alone, infections that kill between 12 percent and 25 percent of patients who get them and cost about $25,000 each to treat. A small Massachusetts study published in 2002 suggested that 13 percent of 1,953 cardiac bypass patients suffered infections at the site of their surgery, including ones detected after patients were discharged.
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CDC estimates that there are approximately 1.7 million hospital-acquired infections resulting in 99,000 deaths each year. The financial costs of hospital-acquired infections are estimated to be extremely high. Extrapolated nationally, costs were estimated to be $46 billion.
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Any surgery poses a risk of infection, but patients can help reduce those risks. Here are some steps recommended by the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, a nonprofit devoted to safer hospital care.
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Hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) are secondary infections contracted by patients while they are hospitalized. These infections were not present or incubating at the time of admission.1 Between 1975 and 1995, the rate of HAIs increased by 36%.2 The incidence of multidrug-resistant HAIs is also increasing.2
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A recent survey of 1,256 hospitals conducted by the Leapfrog Group found that only 35.4 percent followed recognized guidelines for reducing venous catheterrelated bloodstream infections (CRBIs), which, as their name suggests, occur when hospitals use contaminated catheters, creating an infection that can lead to potentially serious complications and costly additional treatments. However, hospitals like Beth Israel Medical Center in New York have used a series of very simple measures to virtually eliminate their cases of CRBIs.
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Health care workers who close a curtain and then touch a patient can easily transmit bacterial spores and spread the disease, researchers at Cleveland’s Veterans Administration hospital told the Cleveland Plain Dealer this week.
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Pennsylvania was the first state to publicly report such information. The findings were stunning: an infection rate of 12.2 per 1,000 hospital cases, leading to over 394,000 infection-related hospital days amounting to hospital charges of $3.5 billion. According to the report, the average commercial insurance payment related to caring for a patient who acquired an infection in the hospital was almost $54,000, compared with approximately $8,000 in commercial insurance payments for each patient who did not acquire an infection.
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Sepsis is the body’s systemic response to infection, which in severe cases can cause organ failure and death. It’s estimated that 750,000 people die each year from sepsis, said Randy Fusco, chief technology officer and strategist for Microsoft’s U.S. health care provider industry unit.
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By definition, hospitals are supposed to boost our health. But they often do quite the opposite. An estimated 2 million Americans annually acquire infections in hospitals, and 90,000 of them die — twice the number of those who die in all traffic accidents. In fact, more people die from hospital-acquired infections than die from traffic accidents, AIDS and breast cancer combined. And that doesn’t even count an estimated 1.5 million health-care related infections acquired in long-term care facilities such as nursing homes, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Hospital acquired infections (HAIs), also called nosocomial infections to better describe the range of places they can occur, have become a major health concern. In the U.S., between 5% and 10% of patients admitted to acute care hospitals acquire infections. This accounts for over two million patients per year, and these infections result in over 90,000 deaths per year. Over one-quarter of HAIs occur in ICUs, but nursing homes and rehabilitation centers are also impacted.
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Approximately one out of every 22 patients who checks into a U.S. hospital acquires a bacterial infection, adding more than $28 billion to health care costs, according to a 2009 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Access to improved infection-control technology is one of the promises at the dawn of the 21st century. Another is improved handwashing compliance associated with more attractive and accessible products. Two recent factors influencing infection control are use of antibiotic-bonded vascular catheters and access to alcohol hand-cleansing materials that improve handwashing compliance. In a multicenter study reported by Darouiche and colleagues, bloodstream infections were significantly reduced when patients received catheters bonded with rifampin and minocycline
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One tidbit of information I didn’t know. I didn’t know that hospital acquired infections are now considered the 4th leading cause of death in the United States. And another one which makes sense — if you have had a staph infection previously, you are at higher risk of getting another one. So I did learn something. Always grateful for the opportunity.
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Every year in the United States, approximately 5% of patients admitted to hospitals develop hospital acquired infections (Staph, MRSA, etc.). A hospital acquired infection is one that is caused by just being in the hospital. Such infections double the rate of mortality for admitted patients, and it a leading cause of death in this country.
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Since the turn of the new millennium there has been a dramatic increase in the incidence of C.difficile. Currently the most frequently occurring healthcare associated infection, last year it killed more than seven times as many people in the UK as MRSA. Reasons for this increase may include improvements in reporting procedures, the increasing age of the population as the elderly are especially vulnerable, lower standards of hygiene and overcrowding on hospital wards.
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