After more than 30 years of localized development of infection prevention and control in China, a prevention and control system in line with China’s conditions has been established. Since the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic began, with the unprecedented attention paid to healthcare associated infection by health administrative departments at all levels, the awareness of infection prevention and control of various personnel has been continuously strengthened, which has promoted the cross-integration and development of infection prevention and control-related disciplines. However, under the normalized pandemic prevention and control, infection prevention and control work also faces enormous pressure and challenges. This paper summarizes the opportunities for infection prevention and control in the new era, analyzes the current challenges in the field of infection prevention and control, and aims to provide some ideas for the future development of infection prevention and control.
There is a worldwide consensus that urgent action is needed to prevent and control multi-drug resistant organisms in health care settings, especially carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (CRAB) and carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa (CRPsA). In 2017, to focus on this topic, World Health Organization organized experts worldwide to develop guidelines for the prevention and control of CRE, CRPsA and CRAB. In this paper, we introduced the background, development process, main measures, advantages and disadvantages of the guidelines to help infection prevention and control practitioners take actions properly based on the guidelines.
In October 2022, thirteen government departments including the National Health Commission jointly issued the National Action Plan to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance (2022-2025) to proactively address challenges of antimicrobial resistance. In support of the implementation of the National Action Plan in healthcare institutions, the authors put forward following suggestions for prevention and control measures: strengthen construction of supporting systems and disciplines, enhance prevention and control of hospital-acquired infections caused by drug-resistant bacteria, promote precision diagnosis and treatment through diagnostic stewardship, advance rational drug use by performing prescription review, carry out universal and targeted training, establish clinical decision support systems using information technology, improve monitoring and evaluation systems, and enhance multi-source data fusion and application.
Objective
To survey and analyze the drug resistance of clinical isolated strains of bloodborne infectious staphylococci, in order to provide references for clinical diagnosis of aureus septicemia and rational use of antimicrobial agents.
Methods
We retrospectively studied the clinical data of 496 patients with staphylococcal septicemia confirmed by blood culture between June 2008 and May 2015 in West China Hospital of Sichuan University. The microbiological characteristics of the disease were analyzed.
Results
In the included 496 cases, there were 216 (43.55%) cases of coagulase-positive Staphylococcus (CPS) septicemia and 280 (56.45%) of coagulase-negative Staphylococcus (CNS) septicemia; 85 (17.14%) cases were caused by community infection, while the other 411 (82.86%) resulted from hospital infection. The drug resistance rate of CPS and CNS toward oxacillin was respectively 27.78% (60/216) and 87.50% (245/280), with a significant difference (P < 0.05). In al l the clinical isolated strains of CPS, the drug resistance rate of community infected strains and hospital infected strains toward oxacillin was respectively 9.67% (6/62) and 35.06% (54/154), with a significant difference (P < 0.05). For the clinical isolated strains of CNS, the drug resistance rate of community infected strains and hospital infected strains toward oxacillin was respectively 69.57% (16/23) and 89.11% (229/257), also with a significant difference (P < 0.05).
Conclusions
The drug resistance of hospital infected staphylococcal strains is stronger than community infected strains. The CNS strains are more drug-resistant than CPS strains.
Healthcare-associated infection management has advanced rapidly in recent years. With the development of more standards and guidelines, infection control measures become more standardized and evidence-based. Evidence-based measures are increasingly applied in infection control, which promote more studies on the prevention and control of healthcare-associated infections. Furthermore, more new ideas of infection control have emerged, with old ones being challenged. The hand hygiene reform, multidrug-resistant organisms, and surgical site infections become the hot topics in recent years. In addition, whole-genome sequencing also provides more bases for understanding pathogen transmission in hospitals. Based on the high-quality studies published in recent years, this opinion review discusses these hot topics in the prevention and control of healthcare-associated infections.
