Establishment of a national database for ICU-associated infections. First results from the "Krankenhaus-Infektions-Surveillance-System" (KISS)

Objectives. To establish a surveillance system as an element of internal qu ality management, participating intensive care units (ICUs) report their IC U-associated infection surveillance data for aggregation into a national da tabase. Methods. in order to provide data on ICU-associated infections,a nosocomial surveillance system in German intensive care units (Krankenhaus-Infektions -Surveillance-System (KISS)) started in 1997. The method of data collection is based on the (adult) ICU surveillance component from the National Nosoc omial Infections Surveillance (NNIS)-System. Until now 113 German ICUs (mos t of them medical/surgical ICUs) were included in this system. We continuou sly collected and calculated the data from site-specific infections (device -associated pneumonias, blood stream infections and urinary tract infection s). Results. There are now a total of 393.177 patient-days (100.015 patients) a mong them 176.415 ventilator-days, 295.221 central line-days and 316.799 ur inary catheter-days in the data base. The data analysis showed the followin g device-associated infection rates: 11.2 pneumonias/1000 ventilator-days, 1.8 primary bloodstream infections/1000 central line-days and 4.0 urinary t ract infections/1000 urinary catheter-days. Conclusion. The project has reached high interest in Germany and animated m ore ICUs to take part or to apply the same method in order to use the refer ence data for comparison.