Major ArticleSystematic review of economic analyses of health care-associated infections
Section snippets
Methods
A systematic review of existing published evidence was conducted. Articles were included if they were published between January 2001 and June 2004, had an abstract for review, contained an original cost estimate, and were written in English. To find the published analyses, searches were conducted in MEDLINE, EconoLit, and HealthSTAR using the medical subject headings (MeSH) or text keywords “nosocomial infections,” “infection control,” or “hospital acquired infections” cross referenced with
Results
One hundred fifty-two manuscripts were obtained for review. Of these, 70 studies met our eligibility criteria. See Appendix A for full list of the eligible articles. Table 1 summarizes publications in terms of country of study, funding source, description of HAI analyzed, and economic methods employed.
The majority of the analyses were conducted in the United States. Although the most commonly reported funding source for these studies was government or industry, many authors did not report
Discussion
We have found substantial growth in published evidence estimating the cost of HAI and interventions aimed at decreasing the related morbidity and mortality. In our previous audit using the same inclusion criteria, there were only 55 eligible articles found over a 10-year period compared with the 70 publications we found over a two-and-half-year period.8 However, as in the previous audit, the majority of the articles were simple cost analyses conducted from the hospital rather than the societal
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Supported by an unrestricted grant from the Association of Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology Research Foundation through a grant from 3M Health Care.