Andre Ricardo Araujo da Silva
Federal Fluminense University, Brazil
Title: Most international guidelines on prevention of healthcare-associated infection lack comprehensive recommendations for neonates and children
Biography
Biography: Andre Ricardo Araujo da Silva
Abstract
There are many formal guidelines about infection prevention and control (IPC) published by national policy committees,professional societies and expert groups, focusing mainly on hand hygiene and the prevention of device-related healthcareassociated infections (HAIs). Although guidelines as stand-alone are insufficient to prevent healthcare-associated infections (HAI), such documents are useful to inform local implementation of evidence-based measures. Guidelines should incorporate up-to-date evidence from a systematic review including assessing the quality of the identified studies, and recommendations by an expert committee taking into account the levels of evidence and applicability. However, many guidelines suffer from lack of transparency and inconsistent application of strengths of evidence. International infection prevention (IPC) guidelines provide standardized recommendations for healthcare-associated infection (HAI) prevention in adults, but often lack specific information about neonates and children. We reviewed 10 international IPC/HAI guidelines to identify pediatric-specific recommendations for HAI prevention. Hand hygiene, bloodstream infection, ventilator-associated pneumonia, environmental control and outbreak management were frequently reported with recommendations applicable to children and newborns, but documents on catheter-associated urinary tract infection, surgical site infection and antibiotic stewardship were lacking.