A Study on Hospital Acquired Infections among Patients in a Tertiary Care Hospital of Darjeeling District, West Bengal

Introduction Hospital Acquired Infections (HAI), also called ‘Nosocomial Infections’ are identified at least 48-72 hours following admission to health institution. In many hospitals, HAI appears to be a hidden, cross-cutting problem. Thus a continuous surveillance is imperative for determining the extent of the problem and its effective prevention and control. Present study determines the incidence and different types of hospital acquired infections and the bacterial pathogens responsible for those. Materials and Methods An observational longitudinal study was undertaken during January to June 2014, among 107 patients admitted in ENT wards of North Bengal Medical College and Hospital (NBMCH), selected by consecutive inclusion technique. Information was taken using a predesigned, pretested semi-structured schedule. The collected data were analyzed as frequencies, percentages and means ± standard deviations. Results The present study found incidence rate of hospital acquired infections as 19.6% and incidence density as 26.35 per 1000 patient days. Surgical site infection was commonest type (57.2%) followed by urinary tract infection (23.8%) and blood stream infection (19.0%) respectively. 15.4% of blood cultures, 100.0% of surgical wound swab cultures and 21.7% of urine cultures were positive and gram negative bacteria were most frequently occurring organisms. Most commonly found bacteria were Pseudomonas and Klebsiella. Discussion Background characteristics of the study population; incidence rate, the different types of hospital acquired infections among those admitted patients and the bacterial pathogens responsible for those infections have been discussed along with review of literature. Conclusion Even if in a tertiary health care facility, hospital acquired infection rate could not be brought down into <10%. So implementation of stringent guidelines on prevention of HAI and continuous surveillance and monitoring system can help to diminish this problem in future.