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Pediatric Infections in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU)

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Infectious Diseases in the Intensive Care Unit

Abstract

The last century has witnessed unmatched advances in understanding of disease processes, surgical skills, and medical technology thereby enhancing our ability to add years to life. However, these advances have introduced newer subsets of problems; infectious complications related to therapeutic interventions being the most prominent amongst them. They affect both the developed and the developing countries and have a potential to prolong the morbidity and hospital stay, propagate antimicrobial resistance, affect the family economy adversely, and escalate the mortality figures. These nosocomial, hospital-acquired or health-care associated infections (HAI) are not present or incubating at the time of admission to the health-care facility (hospital or ICU). It is inherent in the definition of nosocomial infection that the patient was admitted for a reason other than the infection under consideration. Also included within the domain of nosocomial infections are those infections that were acquired during the ICU stay but presented after discharge of the patient and the occupational infections amongst the ICU staff (Benenson 1995). The incidence of nosocomial infections in the ICU patients is 5–10 times higher than that in the general hospital admissions; the toll is even higher for pediatric patients in view of their inherent susceptibility (immature immune system, lack of prior exposure to same or similar antigens, porosity of physical barriers to external invaders, presence of congenital or acquired immunodeficiency disorders, parenteral nutrition for prolonged periods and association with congenital anomalies) (Dasgupta et al. 2015). A study from Europe reported a 25 times higher incidence of nosocomial infections in the neonatal intensive care units as compared to the general children ward (Raymond and Aujard 2000).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pediatric Surgery, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India

    Sachit Anand, Minu Bajpai & Prabudh Goel

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  1. Sachit Anand
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  2. Minu Bajpai
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India

    Manish Soneja

  2. Department of Anesthesiology, Pain Medicine and Critical Care, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India

    Puneet Khanna

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Anand, S., Bajpai, M., Goel, P. (2020). Pediatric Infections in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). In: Soneja, M., Khanna, P. (eds) Infectious Diseases in the Intensive Care Unit. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4039-4_24

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4039-4_24

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