What is the applicability of a novel surveillance concept of ventilator-associated events?

Abstract

<div lang="en" class="abs"><p class="abs_header">Abstract</p><p><em>Background:</em> In 2013, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a novel surveillance concept called the “ventilator-associated event,” which focused surveillance on objective measures of complications among patients that underwent invasive ventilations.</p><p><em>Objective:</em> To evaluate the concordance and possible differences in efficacy (ie, disease severity and outcomes) between 2 surveillance paradigms: (1) infection-related ventilator-associated complications (iVAC) and (2) on conventional ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP).</p><p><em>Design:</em> Prospective, observational, single-center cohort study.</p><p><em>Patients:</em> This study included 85 adult patients that received invasive ventilation for at least 2 consecutive calendar days in a 22-bed, adult, mixed medical-surgical intensive care unit in Finland between October 2014 and June 2015.</p><p><em>Results:</em> Among these patients, 9 (10.1 per 1,000 days of mechanical ventilation) developed iVAC (10.6%) and 20 (22.4 per 1,000 days of mechanical ventilation) developed conventional VAP (23.5%). The iVAC indicators were most often caused by atelectasis and fluid overload. Compared with patients with conventional VAP, patients with iVAC had significantly worse respiratory status but no other differences in disease severity or outcomes.</p><p><em>Conclusions:</em> The incidence of conventional VAP was >2-fold that of iVAC, and the surveillance paradigms for VAP and iVAC capture different patterns of disease. Our results suggest that this novel surveillance concept, although based on objective measures of declining oxygenation, actually identified deteriorations of oxygenation due to noninfectious causes.</p></div>