Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia

Hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) is defined as an infection of the pulmonary parenchyma that develops in patients admitted to hospital for more than 48 hours and that was not incubating at the time of admission. It represents one of the most common and serious nosocomial infections, associated with significant morbidity, prolonged hospitalisation, and increased mortality in critically ill patients. The aetiology of HAP is primarily driven by micro-aspiration of bacteria colonising the oropharynx and upper gastrointestinal tract. Pathogen distribution is shaped by the duration of hospitalisation, prior antibiotic exposure, local epidemiology, and patient characteristics. Multidrug-resistant (MDR) organisms are particularly prevalent in patients with prolonged inpatient stay and intensive care unit (ICU) admission, as critically ill patients become rapidly colonised with nosocomial pathogens. Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), a subgroup of nosocomial pneumonia, occurs in patients requiring tracheal intubation and mechanical ventilation for at least 48 hours. A clinically important and increasingly recognised entity is ventilated HAP (v-HAP), defined as HAP that subsequently requires tracheal intubation and mechanical ventilation. Emerging evidence indicates that v-HAP carries the highest mortality among nosocomial pneumonia subtypes in ICU patients - exceeding VAP - while non-ventilated ICU-acquired HAP carries the lowest mortality.

Almost 90 out of 100 people carry herpes simplex viruses (HSV). Once a person has been infected with the herpes viruses, he or she can't get rid of them for the rest of her/his life. For the most part, the viruses are in a dormant state. Only when the immune system is weakened, for example in the case of a serious illness or stress, are the viruses reactivated. They then mainly cause cold sores, which are harmless for healthy people and usually heal without therapy. However, especially in people with a weakened immune system, HSV can also cause serious infections, such as meningitis. In almost every second mechanically ventilated patient in intensive care who has pneumonia, HSV can be detected in the respiratory tract. This is caused by reactivation of the viruses as a result of the severe underlying disease and stress during intensive care therapy. Whether treatment of the herpes viruses (e.g. with acyclovir) is necessary in this situation and helps the patients to cure has not been clarified, especially as acyclovir can also cause side effects such as a deterioration in kidney function. Currently, the physicians decide to treat the herpes viruses in about half of the patients. Several studies have shown that patients for whom the physician decided to treat the viruses survived more often. However, all of these studies looked at the course of the disease only retrospectively and thus are subject to many biases (including physician selection of who receives treatment, missing data). A definitive conclusion as to whether herpesvirus therapy can be recommended cannot be drawn without doubt from these studies. Therefore, the investigators would like to investigate in a randomized controlled trial, i.e. patients are randomly assigned to the experimental (therapy of herpesviruses) or control group (no therapy of herpesviruses), the effect of therapy with acyclovir on survival in ventilated intensive care patients with lower respiratory tract infection (pneumonia) in whom a large amount of HSV was found in the respiratory tract. The goal of the study is to provide clarity on whether therapy will help patients recover.

The purpose of this study is to learn about the safety and effectiveness of Zavicefta once released into the markets in Korea. This study is to learn about Zavicefta in patients with difficult types of infections in the abdomen, urinary tract and pneumonia which could have come from hospitalizations. This study was required by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) of Korea's regulations.

Determine the efficacy of dexamethasone plus standard of care (SOC) as compared to placebo plus SOC for treating severe hospital-acquired pneumonia in critically ill patients with a proinflammatory phenotype; It's an international phase III, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trial.

The goal of this clinical trial is to propose a seamless intervention linking rapid bacterial isolate identification and antibiotic resistance gene detection and targeted antibiotic prescription to minimise time between infection onset and appropriate treatment in patients with Pseudomonas aeruginosa or carbapenemase producing Enterobacterales infections. This is an investigator initiated trial. The primary hypothesis is that these interventions will lead to improved clinical outcomes amongst patients with hospital-acquired bloodstream infection, hospital-acquired pneumonia or ventilator-associated pneumonia due to carbapenem non-susceptible Pseudomonas aeruginosa or Enterobacterales, compared to standard antibiotic susceptibility testing. Patients will be randomised to either a control or intervention arm. Patients randomised to the intervention arm will have relevant specimens analysed by rapid microbiological diagnostics and will have early availability of ceftazidime-avibactam if appropriate. Patients randomised to the control arm, will have samples analysed by clinical microbiology laboratories using standard of care diagnostics. Antibiotics will be available to these patients as per usual institutional practice.

The goal of this prospective and observatory study is to learn about the pathogen, clinical manifestations, prognosis, treatment and antibiotic resistance of bacteria in hospital-acquired pneumonia patients in China. The main purposes of this study are: 1. clarify the regional differences and changes over time in the pathogen spectrum and antibiotic resistance rate among HAP patients in China; 2. build a continuously optimized nationwide HAP pathogen and antibiotic resistance surveillance network; 3. identify the molecular epidemiology of common pathogens