Healthcare-Associated Infections

Common Healthcare-Associated Infections

Healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs) remain a concern within hospital settings as they threaten the safety and wellness of healthcare professionals, workers, and patients. The most common HCAIs affect the urinary tract, the bloodstream, wounds, the skin, and the respiratory and gastrointestinal systems. They include diarrhea and vomiting, bloodstream infections, skin and soft tissue infections (SSTIs), ventilator-associated pneumonia, urinary tract infections (UTI, and deep incisional surgical site infections (Wilcox & Dryden, 2021).

Today, a growing concern in the prevention and management of HCAIs is the growing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) of infectious agents in healthcare settings, such as multidrug-resistant pathogens such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and vancomycin-resistant Enterococci, among other agents and infections within hospital settings (Ilyas et al., 2019).

Comparison of Infectious Agents in Healthcare and Community Settings

The infectious agents for HCAIs and Community-Acquired Infections (CAIs) do not have many differences. However, in some infections, there are notable differences in the infectious agents of HCAIs when compared to those encountered within community settings. A key difference is that HCAI agents are contracted from hospitals and other healthcare facilities while CAI agents are acquired outside care facilities. During treatment, patients within healthcare facilities are more exposed and susceptible to various causative agents. This means that HCAIs may have extra infectious agents as compared to CAIs. For instance, UTIs within hospitals are caused by Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeuroginosa, Klebsiella oxytoca, and Serratia (Akinkugbe et al., 2020), while UTIs within communities are primarily caused by Escherichia coli. Respiratory tract infections (RTIs) in healthcare facilities are mostly caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus, and Hemophilus influenza. Contrariwise, RTIs within community settings are caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenza, and Neisseria meningitises. Another notable example of differences in causative agents for HCAIs and CAIs are those related to gastrointestinal infections. Gastrointestinal infections in hospital facilities are majorly caused by Salmonella serotypes and Clostridium difficile (Haque et al., 2018), while in community settings are caused by Adenovirus Gastroenteritis.

References

Akinkugbe, O., Cooke, F. J., & Pathan, N. (2020). Healthcare-associated bacterial infections in the pediatric ICU. JAC-Antimicrobial Resistance, 2(3). https://doi.org/10.1093/JACAMR/DLAA066

Haque, M., Sartelli, M., McKimm, J., & Bakar, M. A. (2018). Health care-associated infections – an overview. Infection and Drug Resistance, 11, 2321. https://doi.org/10.2147/IDR.S177247

Ilyas, F., Burbridge, B., & Babyn, P. (2019). Health Care-Associated Infections and the Radiology Department. Journal of Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences, 50(4), 596-606.e1. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JMIR.2019.07.011

Wilcox, M. H., & Dryden, M. (2021). Update on the epidemiology of healthcare-acquired bacterial infections: focus on complicated skin and skin structure infections. Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, 76(Supplement_4), iv2–iv8. https://doi.org/10.1093/JAC/DKAB350

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