Healthcare-Associated Infections among Patients in a Large Burn Intensive Care Unit: Incidence and Pathogens, 2008–2012

Abstract

Burn injuries are a common source of morbidity and mortality in the United States, with an estimated 450,000 burn injuries requiring medical treatment, 40,000 requiring hospitalization, and 3,400 deaths from burns annually in the United States. Patients with severe burns are at high risk for local and systemic infections. Furthermore, burn patients are immunosuppressed, as thermal injury results in less phagocytic activity and lymphokine production by macrophages. In recent years, multidrug-resistant (MDR) pathogens have become major contributors to morbidity and mortality in burn patients.Since only limited data are available on the incidence of both device- and nondevice-associated healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) in burn patients, we undertook this retrospective cohort analysis of patients admitted to our burn intensive care unit (ICU) from 2008 to 2012.