Introduction: Patients in neurosurgical units are particularly susceptible to healthcare-associated infections (HAI) due to invasive interventions in the central nervous system. Materials and methods: The study was conducted between 2014 and 2019 in neurosurgery units in Poland. The aim of the study was to investigate the epidemiology and microbiology of HAIs and to assess the effectiveness of surveillance conducted in two hospital units. Both hospitals ran (since 2012) the unified prospective system, based on continuous surveillance of HAIs designed and recommended by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (protocol version 4.3) in the Healthcare-Associated Infections Surveillance Network (HAI-Net). In study hospitals, HAIs were detected by the Infection Prevention Control Nurse (IPCN). The surveillance of healthcare infections in hospital A was based mainly on analysis of microbiological reports and telephone communication between the epidemiological nurse and the neurosurgery unit. HAI monitoring in hospital B was an outcome of daily personal communication between the infection prevention and control nurse and patients in the neurosurgery unit (HAI detection at the bedside) and assessment of their health status based on clinical symptoms presented by the patient, epidemiological definitions, microbiological and other diagnostic tests (e.g., imaging studies). In hospital A, HAI monitoring did not involve personal communication with the unit but was rather based on remote analysis of medical documentation found in the hospital database. Results: A total of 12,117 patients were hospitalized. There were 373 HAIs diagnosed, the general incidence rate was 3.1%. In hospital A, the incidence rate was 2.3%, and in hospital B: 4.8%. HAI types detected: pneumonia (PN) (n = 112, 0.9%), (urinary tract infection (UTI) (n = 108, 0.9%), surgical site infection (SSI) (n = 96, 0.8%), bloodstream infection (BSI) (n = 57, 0.5%), gastrointestinal system infection (GI) (n = 13, 0.1%), skin and soft tissue (SST) (n = 9, 0.1%). HAI with invasive devices: 44 ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) cases (45.9/1000 pds with ventilator); catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CA-UTI): 105 cases (2.7/1000 pds with catheter); central venous catheter (CVC-BSI): 18 cases (1.9/1000 pds with CVC). The greatest differences between studied units were in the incidence rate of PN (p < 0.001), UTI (p < 0.001), and SSI (p < 0.05). Conclusions: The way HAIs are diagnosed and qualified and the style of work of the infection control team may have a direct impact on the unit epidemiology with the application of epidemiological coefficients. Prospective surveillance run by the infection prevention and control nurse in hospital B could have been associated with better detection of infections expressed in morbidity, especially PN and UTI, and a lower risk of VAP. In hospital A, the lower incidence might have resulted from an inability to detect a UTI or BSI and less supervision of VAP. The present results require further profound research in this respect.
Keywords: benchmarking; healthcare-associated infections; infection prevention and control; neurosurgery.