A European care bundle for management of ventilator-associated pneumonia

Although there is a wealth of guidance concerning the management of patients with ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), compliance with recommendations concerning optimal treatment practices is highly variable.

This document presents a comprehensive care bundle package addressing all aspects of VAP diagnosis and treatment in an attempt to promote guideline-compliant practices. Uniquely, the development of these care bundles used a formalized method to assess the supporting data, based on multicriteria decision analysis.

This system allowed the numerous VAP management parameters identified from recent European guidelines to be ranked according to defined criteria. The resulting VAP care bundles are (a) diagnosis: early chest x-rays within 1 hour, immediate reporting of respiratory secretions Gram staining, and (b) therapy: immediate treatment, empiric therapy based on local pathogens and risk factors, de-escalation, assessment of response within 72 hours, and short therapy duration if feasible.

Adoption of these care bundles should rationalize VAP management practices and facilitate the development of consistent and guideline-compliant care processes.