title: Economic aspects of preventing health care-associated infections in the intensive care unit.
abstract: Infection prevention is critical to providing a high standard of care in the intensive care unit (ICU). Recent focus on eliminating health care–associated infections (HAIs) has met with variable results. Although evidence-based as far as their components, policy-driven bundled HAI prevention interventions have been evaluated in a limited and potentially biased fashion for their effectiveness, and analyses of their cost-effectiveness are lacking. We use ventilator-associated pneumonia as the case study to illustrate the pitfalls and challenges of arriving at the optimal HAI preventive strategies in the ICU.
authors: Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, School of Public Health and Health Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA. EviMedgroup@gmail.com
authors: Marya D
authors: MD
authors: Zilberberg
authors: Andrew F
authors: AF
authors: Shorr
mesh_terms: D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D003428:Cross Infection / Q000191:economics / Q000517:prevention & control*; D006801:Humans; D007362:Intensive Care Units / Q000191:economics*; D053717:Pneumonia, Ventilator-Associated / Q000191:economics / Q000517:prevention & control*; D014481:United States