Prevalence of Nosocomial Infection in Selected Cities in Mazandaran Province Based on National Nosocomial Infections Surveillance System

Background and Nosocomial infections are among the main causes of death among hospitalized patients. Successful control of these infections requires awareness on their prevalence and taking preventive measures in hospitals. This study aimed at determining the prevalence of hospital-acquired infections in Mazandaran province. A descriptive-longitudinal study was performed in 15 hospitals in Mazandaran province that record their infection rates in NISS software. Data was analyzed at the significance level of 0.05 using SPSS and STATA software. To investigate the relationships between different variables crosstabs and Poisson regression were applied. The mean ages of infected male and female were 54.53±0.67 and 49.2±0.63 years, respectively (P<0.05). In 2011 there were 342 cases per 10,000 while in 2012 a total of 6825 per 10,000 was recorded. The highest prevalence of infections was due to pneumonia, urinary infection, surgical incisions, and burn wounds. The majority of infections were caused by Escherichia coli (E. coli) (12.3%), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (6.3%), Acinetobacter (6.1%), and Klebsiella (5.9%). A significant relationship was observed between an underlying disease and various types of infections (P<0.05). The risk of hospital infections in women was 1.09 times more than men (P=0.918). The difference observed between current findings is probably due to lack of precise recording of the infected patients in hospitals. Therefore, it is necessary to hold training programs throughout the province, so that nurses become more familiar with NISS software.