Nosocomial Infection Rates in Adult and Pediatric Intensive Care Units in the United States

Abstract To determine which intensive care unit (ICU) infection rate may be best for interhospital and intrahospital comparisons and to assess the influence of invasive devices and type of ICU on infection rates, we analyzed data from the National Nosocomial Infections Surveillance System. From October 1986 to December 1990, 79 hospitals reported 2,334 hospital-months of data from 196 hospitals units. The median overall infection rate was 9.2 infections per 100 patients. However, this infection rate had a strong positive correlation with average length of ICU stay (r = 0.60, p