Introduction A point-prevalence survey of adult patients was conducted from 14 July to 16 August 2010 in the “BUSINCO” Hospital, a regional primary oncology care centre, to measure the prevalence of Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs).

Methods The study consisted of a first phase (30 days), conducted using a daily monitoring system ward by ward and a second phase, starting after hospital discharge and lasting 30 days. International standardised criteria and definitions for the surveillance of HAI were used (CDC).

Results 394 patients were surveyed and the mean length stay was 8.5 days (extra stay of 12.5 if HAI).The most common HAIs were primary bloodstream infections (32%), in bone marrow transplantation unit due to coagulase-negative staphylococci), followed by urinary tract (27%), respiratory tract (18%) and surgical site (14%) infections. The use of antibiotics in class I operations (clean), showed that 63 patients (57%) received inappropriate prophylactic treatment. A univariate analysis (HAI vs several risk factors: length of stay, urinary catheter, mechanical ventilation, central intravenous catheter) showed a statistically significant association (p<0.005). The multiple logistic regression only showed a significant correlation between HAI and length of stays.

Conclusions Data obtained from this study are representative of an individual setting and our selected activity (immunocompromised patients), necessarily leads to different results than a general hospital. Direct costs of hospitalisation have been proposed as a better method for estimating the cost of hospital-acquired infections and the questionnaire used in this study was added to the hospital discharge registry as a daily routine HAI surveillance tool.