hospital acquired pneumonia (HAP)

see also:

• RCH guideline - pneumonia
• community acquired pneumonia (CAP) in adults

• hospital acquired pneumonia can be categorised into various groups:
  • ventilator associated pneumonia
    • risk is lower with daily toothbrushing³⁾
  • aspiration pneumonia
    • eg. stroke patients
  • infectious spread pneumonias from other patients or from staff or visitors
    • these are much more commonly viral pneumonitis rather than bacterial pneumonias
  • infrastructure-related hospital-acquired pneumonias
    • fortunately very rare to be acquired in hospitals
    • eg Legionella from cooling towers
  • non-ventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia
    • occurs in ~1% of patients hospitalised for more than 48 hours in Australia
    • this may largely be due to reduced oral hygiene whilst in hospital
    • an Australian study ⁴⁾ showed that by increasing oral care from 16 to 62% by providing toothbrushes, etc and educating patients to do at least daily toothbrushing, pneumonia rates fell by 60%!