Nosocomial infections in neurosurgery intensive care units

Nosocomial infections can lead to complications in the patients admitted to neurosurgery intensive care units. The most common causes are ventriculitis, shunt infections, meningitis, surgical wound infections, urinary tract infections, pneumonia, intravascular catheter related to infections and gastrointestinal infections.

This article is written to determine strategies that nurses can apply to minimize nosocomial infections seen in neurosurgery intensive care units.

The article is systematic review.

A MEDLINE and CINAHL search was carried out using descriptor terms. This overview is targeted at neurosurgery intensive care nurses to demonstrate to them that principles of infection control in the neurosurgery intensive care units are based on simple concepts and that basic measures are easy to implement at the bedside. The 20 articles were identified that met the requirements for methodological quality and inclusion criteria.

In order to reduce infection rates it is useful to inform intensive care nurses about the infection sources and it is useful to change their behaviours.

Infection control measures are to be viewed as priority and have to be integrated fully into the continuous process of improvement of quality of care.

Little research about the treatment/care and rates of nosocomial infections in the neurosurgery care unit was found. It was found that this subject has not been widely covered in nursing journals. This article can provide knowledge regarding the effective strategies of infection control in the neurosurgery intensive care units. Practicing nurses can use that knowledge to enhance the quality of nursing care.