title: Recognition of endemic and epidemic prosthetic device infections: the role of surveillance, the hospital infection control practitioner, and the hospital epidemiologist.
abstract: Surveillance as a means of identifying endemic and epidemic problems is an established and useful public health practice, which increasingly has been applied to the hospital population. The current practice of hospital infection control surveillance tends to concentrate on acute, in-hospital events. It will miss most longer-term prosthetic device infections, since they will often appear at a distance both in time and place. Currently, case report information is not reliably returned to the hospital or physician responsible for the implantation of the device. Since ongoing analysis of the epidemiologic patterns involved in these cases would seem useful, it is proposed that existing infection control units create, define, and maintain a system of net-working communication to return case data to the hospital of origin. This hospital could then combine these data with its own population data, in the hopes of generating useful epidemiologic information for the future.
authors.affiliation: Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.
authors.forename: C C
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Hopkins
mesh_terms: D003428:Cross Infection / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology / Q000517:prevention & control; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D004813:Epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D008505:Medical Staff, Hospital; D010819:Physician's Role; D011159:Population Surveillance; D019736:Prostheses and Implants / Q000009:adverse effects*