Economic Analysis of Nosocomial Infections in a Turkish University Hospital

Abstract

Nosocomial infections constitute an important health problem with morbidity, and high mortality, prolongation of hospital stay, and increased costs of direct patient care. This study was conducted in Hacettepe University Hospital in order to determine the cost of nosocomial infections and length of hospitalization by matching infected patients with uninfected controls. Data collected from 102 individuals with nosocomial infection (group A) and 102 controls without nosocomial infection (group B) were recorded by using a computer program (dbase IV). Urinary tract infections, surgical wound infections and bacteremias were the most common nosocomial infections. Patients were generally located in Internal Medicine, Neurosurgery, General Surgery Clinics. The mean total length of stay was 35.1 and 14.8 days for group A and group B, respectively (p<0.001). The average hospital cost was US $2280 for group A, and US $698 for group B (p<0.001). Mortality rates were 19.6% for patients with nosocomial infections and 2.9% for uninfected controls (p<0.0001). We conclude that the high economic expense which nosocomial infection represents justifies measures to control this entity.

Costs and risk factors for ventilator-associated pneumonia in a Turkish University Hospital's Intensive Care Unit: A case-control study

“…In the assessment of costs, our results are consistent with a marked excess cost of VAP, but when compared with the other studies from Europe and North America our ICU bed prices and procedure costs are lower in our country [35-38]. Besides, as a developing country in Turkey, extremely low fee of ICU bed and procedures [39], the magnitude of the hospital may affect the costs from the point of realized medical processes. We think that the most important data is the cost of VAP, and it is approximately five-fold higher than control patients.…”

Cost analysis and evaluation of nosocomial infections in intensive care units

“…Antibiotics represent a significant part of drug costs. Some studies have reported that antibiotic expenses constitute half of all costs, while others have reported that additional hospitalization time is the most important contributor to nosocomial infection costs (25,26). Yalçın et al reported an additional antibiotic cost of $1136 (25).…”

Daily antibiotic cost of nosocomial infections in a Turkish university hospital

“…It is clear that cost of overall antibiotic treatment for a period of approximately 10–15 days is $900 to $1350. Prolongation of hospital stay has been the major extra cost attributable to nosocomial infections in many reports [2-4], but in comparative case-control study from our country, Yalcin et al [8] found that cost of antibiotic therapy of $1190 per infected patient, accounted for about 75% of the total extra cost. This finding may be due to the high prices of antibiotics in Turkey.…”