Nosocomial Infections and their Risk Factors at Mubarak Al-Kabeer Hospital, Kuwait

Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) include almost all infections that do not originate from a patient s admitting diagnosis. This study is a retrospective cohort study aimed at assessing the prevalence of HAIs at Mubarak Al-Kabeer Hospital (MKH) in Kuwait during the years 2006-2008. MKH is a teaching hospital associated with Kuwait University Faculty of Medicine with a combined medical and surgical intensive care unit (ICU), pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) and 14 wards with 534 beds. There are approximately 20,000 patients discharged from this per year. This retrospective study investigated HAIs in the years 2006-2008. One-way analyses of variance showed that the average attack rate for HAIs in 2006 was significantly lower than in 2007 or 2008 (p 0.01). For HAIs with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), our results revealed 10 (3.3%) MRSA infec-tions in 2006 out of a total of 307 infections, 29 (6.6%) MRSA infections out of 441 total infections in 2007 (p 0.05) and 21 (5.5%) MRSA infections out of 387 total infections in 2008. Pseudomonas aeruginosa (up to 22.5%) and Acinetobacter baumannii (up to 22.1%) were the most predominant pathogens isolated during the period of investigation. Our findings revealed an increasing rate of HAIs among MKH patients. Risk factors for HAIs included the high number of patient admissions and our results indicated the need for effective infection surveillance and control programs to be implemented in the hospital.