Definition
Healthcare-associated pneumonia can be defined as pneumonia in a patient with at least one of the following risk factors:
- hospitalization in an acute care hospital for two or more days in the last 90 days;
- residence in a nursing home or long-term care facility in the last 30 days
- receiving outpatient intravenous therapy (like antibiotics or chemotherapy) within the past 30 days
- receiving home wound care within the past 30 days
- attending a hospital clinic or dialysis center in the last 30 days
- having a family member with known multi-drug resistant pathogens
Although patients with HCAP may have more severe disease than those with classic CAP, disease severity does not determine if a patient has HCAP or not; the label HCAP is merely an indicator of risk factors for multi-drug resistant bacteria.
A recent study defined HCAP as admittance to a hospital or underwent surgery in the past 180 days, based on the observation that colonization with hospital-acquired bacteria can occur for extended periods.
Read more about this topic: Healthcare-associated Pneumonia
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“... we all know the wag’s definition of a philanthropist: a man whose charity increases directly as the square of the distance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“The definition of good prose is proper words in their proper places; of good verse, the most proper words in their proper places. The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)