[Nosocomial infection and its impact on the stay in a neonatal intensive care unit (1988-1991)]

Neonatal intensive care units show one of the highest frequencies of nosocomial infections (NI), specially in teaching hospitals.

The cumulative incidence and distribution of NI in a neonatal intensive care unit of a teaching hospital during three years and three months (536 children) is studied, evaluating the relation between NI and its risk factors with X2 and variance analysis and, finally, estimating the excess stays with a multiple linear regression.

The global cumulative incidence of NI was 11% (or an incidence density of 30.7 per 100 children/month); the prevailing etiological agents were negative coagulase Staphylococcus and fungi of Candida Sp. When analyzing, according to the kind of infection, sepsis associated to catheter, stands out. The relation between the different intrinsic or extrinsic risk factors and the NI was studied as well, and it stood out that infected children suffer manipulations as: Central catheter, assisted respiration, parenteral feeding et cetera, with a greater frequency (twice as much) that of non infected children.

The cumulative incidence of NI is moderate-low; but is is necessary to continue insisting and increasing the current control measures and on the other hand, is is necessary to calculate the excess stays, due to NI, with multivariate methods because the direct estimation produces an overestimation of that one.