The concordance of European and US definitions for healthcare-associated infections (HAI)

The study was performed on 47 ICUs and 6506 patients, 180 PN and 123 BSI cases. Agreement for PN was k = 0.99  (CI95 0.98;1.00). When PN cases were divided in clinically and microbiologically defined PN, kappa values were 0.90 (CI95 0.86;0.94) and 0.72 (CI95 0.63;0.82) respectively. Diagnosis of PN varied among countries: 4 countries predominantly surveyed microbiologically defined PN whereas the others recorded mainly clinically defined PN.

Agreement for BSI was k = 0.73 (CI95 0.66;0.80), BSI cases secondary to another infection site (42% of all BSI) were missed by CDC definitions. BSI concordance was perfect (k = 1.00) when only primary BSI cases (HELICS BSI with origin “catheter” or “unknown” and CDC BSI) were analyzed.

[SINTESI]