Healthcare Associated Infections

The purpose of the study is to determine the effectiveness, safety, and health-care utilization and costs of a preoperative Staphylococcus aureus (SA) screening and decolonization bundle, (5 days of nasal mupirocin ointment, chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG) body wash, and CHG mouth rinse), in eradicating SA carriage compared to other SA decolonization approaches. The study will conduct a single center pilot trial to compare efficacy of different SA decolonization approaches in pre-surgical patients, in eradicating SA carriage, after obtaining informed consent. The study will compare four different approaches, Arm 1) screen for SA carriage and using the three-drug decolonization bundle for 5 days among patients with SA colonization, non SA carriers in this arm will get two pre-op showers with CHG soap, Arm 2) all participants receive the three drug decolonization bundle, Arm 3) all receive pre-op nasal povidone iodine the day of surgery plus two pre-op showers with CHG soap, and Arm 4) all receive nasal alcohol gel the day of surgery plus two pre op showers with CHG soap. The primary efficacy outcome will be eradication of SA colonization at all 5 body sites. Secondary outcomes will be SA surgical site infections (SSIs), all SSIs, and SA healthcare associated infections (HAIs). The study will also compare eradication of SA from each of the 5 body sites as a secondary outcome.

The aim of this project is to achieve useful, universal and standardized definitions for the diagnosis and prevention of ventilator-associated neumonia in patients in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). To this end, a set of recommendations and best practice protocols have been developed in which the healthcare team of the participating units will be trained. These protocols will include evidence-based recommendations for daily practice (oral care, suctioning practices, patient positioning...) and guidelines for the diagnosis, with the goal of improving and standardizing the care that is currently carried out in each unit. To evaluate the extent to which this intervention helps to reduce the frequency of ventilator-associated pneumonia and minimize its impact, a surveillance registry of the patient on invasive mechanical ventilation will be carried out. This registry consists of the collection of general data (sex, type of delivery, gestational age...), the drugs used during the registry (use or not of antibiotics) and the duration of the period during which the patient is under surveillance. If the patient develops pneumonia during the duration of intubation, the clinical and radiological (and in some cases microbiological) data necessary for its diagnosis and the treatment used will be collected. The study is composed of several phases, but if we exclude the phases of formation and structure of the teams, literature review, resource preparation and data processing, the study is composed of 3 clearly differentiated phases in which patients are included. In the first phase, the coordinating team will only give the researchers of each hospital access to the forms and a brief explanation of how to fill them in, but instructing them to follow the usual diagnostic criteria. Once an established period of time has finished, the whole team belonging to the NICUs included in the project will be trained. Finally, after the training period, the teams will incorporate the preventive measures and diagnostic criteria seen in the training to their usual practice. To track behavioral changes from one phase to the next, the researchers will fill out forms to monitor the implementation of measures. Once this last phase has been completed, the results obtained will be analysed and the changes in prevention and diagnosis will be evaluated.

The study aimed to conduct a randomized, non-inferiority controlled trial to compare the short- and medium-term efficacy and safety of two antibiotic dosage regimens in cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIED) infections with multidrug-resistant Gram-positive cocci: 1) single-dose therapy with a long-half-life antibiotic (oritavancin) vs. standard 7-14 days of therapy with a short-half-life antibiotic (vancomycin) for CIED surgical incision site or pocket infection; and 2) fractionated therapy with a long-half-life antibiotic (oritavancin) at seven-day intervals compared to standard therapy with a short-half-life antibiotic (vancomycin) fractionated in 2-3 daily doses in cases of lead-related infectious endocarditis.

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if Infection Control Link Nurses (i.e., clinical nurses providing direct patient care with an interest and expertise in infection control practices) are effective in improving nurses' compliance with standard precaution measures, healthcare professional's compliance with hand hygiene practices and in reducing healthcare-associated infections. The main questions it aims to answer are: * Are Infection Control Link Nurses effective in improving nurses' compliance with standard precautions? * Are Infection Control Link Nurses effective in improving healthcare professionals' compliance with hand hygiene practices? * Are Infection Control Link Nurses effective in improving alcohol-based hand rub consumption? * Are Infection Control Link Nurses effective in reducing healthcare-associated infections? In this study, a total of 8 hospital units will be randomized in two groups: 1) Intervention group, where in 4 hospital units will be selected and trained 4 Infection Control Link Nurses; and 2) Control group, where in 4 hospital units will continue usual IPC practice. Training of Infection Control Link Nurses will be 12 months-long, with regular monthly scheduled meetings. Researchers will compare Intervention group with the Control group to see if nurses' compliance with standard precautions and healthcare professionals' compliance with hand hygiene will improve in the Intervention group, and if overall healthcare-associated infection incidence will decrease. Participants will be nurses working full time in the selected hospital units, for a total of 100 nurses. They will sign an Informed Consent form and they will fill out a validated instrument named "Compliance with Standard Precautions Scale-Italian Version", to measure their adherence to standard precautions measures (i.e., use of protective device, disposal of sharp, disposal of waste etc). Concurrently, evaluation of healthcare professionals' compliance with hand hygiene will be done via direct observation, following World Health Organization's Technical Manual, by hospital staff who did not participate in the conception and design of the study. Lastly, data regarding alcohol-based hand rub consumption and healthcare-associated infections will be collected by experienced personnel who routinely perform these activities. The study will last 12 months, data collection will be carried out at baseline (pre-implementation of infection control link nurses) and after 12 months (after infection control link nurses implementation).