Relationship between Environmental Conditions and Nosocomial Infection Rates in Intensive Care Unit

Abstract

Intensive care units (ICUs) are important departmants at the hospital for nosocomial infections. Although an ICU has 5%– 10% of the hospital beds, 25%–50% of the nosocomial infections originate from the ICU (1,2). Both ventilator-related pneumonia (VRP) and catheter-related urinary tract infections (CRUIs) are the most common infections in the ICU (3). Many risk factors are responsible for nosocomial infection in the ICU (1,4). Some of the risk factos are related to the patient, whereas the others are related to the external factors (1,4). It is known that improving the risk factors decreases the infection, mortality, morbidity, and cost (1,3).