National Surveillance of Infections acquired in Intensive Care Units: Annual Report 2015

The annual upload of the national surveillance database to the TESSy system of
ECDC allows comparison of results with other EU networks following the ECDC
study protocol and case definitions. Based on the latest available report on incidence
of ICU-acquired Infections, BE results for 2015 rank lower than the EU mean of 7.7
ICU-acquired Pneumonia and 3.0 ICU-acquired Bloodstream infections per 1000
patient days (Ref 5).
The low participation to the NSIH-ICU surveillance in the last couple of years needs
extra attention. The reasons for this are multiple. First, collecting data for this
surveillance is only optional under current Federal law (Ref 6), and will normally
come second with respect to the mandatory participation of national NSIH-AMR and -
SEP surveillances under this law. Second, as far as collecting data on ICU-acquired
Bloodstream infection is concerned, double reporting exists with the national SEP
surveillance on Bloodstream infections hospital-wide. The participation to this
surveillance will normally be prioritized given its mandatory status. Furthermore,
single reporting of Pneumonia will ask for more efforts as compared to reporting
Bloodstream infection, given the case definition of the former being based on both
clinical and laboratory criteria.
Because the low number of participating ICUs makes extrapolation of results to a
national context problematic, the following simplifications were already implemented
in the last years: possibility to collect data using the unit-based registration option;
the possibility to choose one infection type and one ICU for registration; the
possibility to avoid re-registration by creating surveillance data directly from existing
electronic sources within the hospital. The following additions to enhance
participation are currently planned: migration to the new healthdata.be platform which
should allow improved electronic registration forms and integrated electronic data
upload; addition of a module on structure and process parameters for the prevention
of infection.