1887
Surveillance and outbreak reports Open Access
Like 0

Abstract

Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are a potentially serious threat to elderly people living in long-term care facilities. Therefore, the European HALT (Healthcare-associated infections in long-term care facilities) project was launched in 2008. HAIs and the use of antibiotics were studied in all 40 nursing homes (100% response) in the city of Frankfurt am Main, Germany, from January to March 2011, using the HALT protocol. Of the 3,732 residents in the homes, 4.3% (n=161) had either signs or symptoms of infections and/or were on oral antibiotics. The most common infections were urinary tract infections (n=45; 1.2%), followed by infections of the respiratory tract (n=41; 1.1%) and skin except mycosis (n=25; 0.7%). The overall prevalence of oral antibiotic use was 2.4% (n=90). The most frequently prescribed oral antibiotics were quinolones (n=31), cephalosporins (n=19), penicillins (n=11) and co-trimoxazole (n=11). The prevalence of HAIs was about the same as that in a European pilot study carried out in November 2009 (5%), but was higher than in several national surveys carried out between May and September 2010 (1.6-3.6%). .

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/10.2807/ese.17.35.20256-en
2012-08-30
2024-11-21
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/10.2807/ese.17.35.20256-en
Loading
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/eurosurveillance/17/35/art20256-en.htm?itemId=/content/10.2807/ese.17.35.20256-en&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah
Submit comment
Close
Comment moderation successfully completed
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error