Hospital infections and hospital hygiene at Malmö General Hospital: 1. The incidence of staphylococcal infections during three years

Abstract

The incidence of purulent staphylococcal infections at a large Swedish university hospital was followed during 3 years and has been described as an expression of the incidence of hospital infections.A marked decrease in the relative number of infections was found. The decrease was most evident among infections with ‘80/81’ strains and other antibiotic resistant hospital strains and was parallel in all the departments investigated. This is taken as an evidence for the assumption that the lowering of the amount of staphylococcal infections was brought about by a factor that was active throughout the hospital, probably some hygienic preventive measure.

Hospital infections and hospital hygiene at Malmö General Hospital: 2. Hygienic measures and their correlation with the incidence of infection

“…In certain of the departments the decline was even more pronounced, for example, in the Departments of Internal Chest Diseases and Obstetrics and Gynaecology, where there was a 70 % reduction in infections with '80/81' and 'multiple-resistant' strains. As mentioned previously, in the Department of General Surgery the frequency of infection was comparatively low, only 1-41-1-11 %, but despite this the number of infections here was reduced by a total of 31% (Ericson & Juhlin, 1965, Table 2).…”

“…In both figs. 1 and 2 of the previous work (Ericson & Juhlin, 1965) one notices in 1961, meanwhile, a distinct decline in the frequency of infection in all nine of the departments which were investigated. In certain of the departments this decline began during the first 6 months and at others during the second 6 months.…”

“…The decline in the frequency of infection continued in most of the departments during 1962 also. Of particular significance was the pronounced reduction in ' 80/81' infections (a reduction of 66-4%) and in infections with multiple-resistant strains (a reduction of 33-3 %) in the complete material from all eight departments (Ericson & Juhlin, 1965, Table 3). In certain of the departments the decline was even more pronounced, for example, in the Departments of Internal Chest Diseases and Obstetrics and Gynaecology, where there was a 70 % reduction in infections with '80/81' and 'multiple-resistant' strains.…”

“…The hygienic measures introduced in 1959 and 1960 were intended mainly as an attempt to reduce the sources of bacteria by tightening up the cleaning and disinfecting regulations for floors, furniture, bed clothes, etc., by isolating personnel with clinical staphylococcal infection, by treating the carriers with nose ointment and in certain cases with antibiotics and, as far as possible, by isolating '80/81' patients. Despite these measures, however, the frequency of infection continued to rise in 1959 and 1960 (for the two 6-month periods of 1960 see Ericson & Juhlin, 1965, fig. 1).…”

Study of Oral, Nasal and Skin Flora in an Investigation on Hospital Infection

“…Increase in antibiotic resistance is most clearly observed in staphylo cocci and recently also in gram-negative bacteria [6,7,12]. In this report, a comparison of strains isolated from patients and from personnel (table IV) indicated greater antibiotic resistance in strains isolated from patients.…”