[Establishment of a national database for ICU-associated infections. First results from the "Krankenhaus-Infections-Surveillance-System" (KISS)].
OBJECTIVE
To establish a surveillance system as an element of internal quality management, participating intensive care units (ICUs) report their ICU-associated infection surveillance data for aggregation into a national database.


METHODS
In order to provide data on ICU-associated infections, a nosocomial surveillance system in German intensive care units (Krankenhaus-Infections-Surveillance-System (KISS)) started in 1997. The method of data collection is based on the (adult) ICU surveillance component from the National Nosocomial Infections Surveillance (NNIS)-System. Until now 113 German ICUs (most of them medical/surgical ICUs) were included in this system. We continuously collected and calculated the data from site-specific infections (device-associated pneumonias, blood stream infections and urinary tract infections).


RESULTS
There are now a total of 393,177 patient-days (100,015 patients) among them 176,415 ventilator-days, 295,221 central line-days and 316,799 urinary catheter-days in the data base. The data analysis showed the following device-associated infection rates: 11.2 pneumonias/1000 ventilator-days, 1.8 primary bloodstream infections/1000 central line-days and 4.0 urinary tract infections/1000 urinary catheter-days.


CONCLUSIONS
The project has reached high interest in Germany and animated more ICUs to take part or to apply the same method in order to use the reference data for comparison.
Geffers
C
C
Institut für Hygiene, Freien Universität Berlin.
Koch
J
J
Sohr
D
D
Nassauer
A
A
Daschner
F
F
Rüden
H
H
Gastmeier
P
P
D003428:Cross Infection / Q000453:epidemiology*; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004864:Equipment and Supplies / Q000009:adverse effects; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D007362:Intensive Care Units; D018410:Pneumonia, Bacterial / Q000453:epidemiology; D011159:Population Surveillance