Preventing Hospital Acquired Pneumonia
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Preventing non-ventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia: the PRHAPs study
IRAS ID
271138
Contact name
Heather Loveday
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of West London
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 4 months, 26 days
Research summary
Pneumonia is an infection in one or both lungs usually caused by a bacteria. Non-Ventilator Hospital-acquired Pneumonia (NV-HAP) is defined as pneumonia occurring in patients who acquired pneumonia during their hospital stay but who have not acquired the pneumonia as a result of being on a ventilator in intensive care. All patients admitted to hospital have some risk of developing NV-HAP but some patients, such as older adults, are at higher risk, particularly if they have had a stroke or are physically very frail. NV-HAP is an important cause of serious illness and sometimes death. If a patient develops NV-HAP it requires treatment with antibiotics and also increases the length of stay in hospital. Strategies to prevent NV-HAP include frequent mouth care, increasing mobilisation, elevating the head of the bed and reviewing medications. However, we currently do not have a simple way of identifying which patients are most prone to developing NV-HAP and would therefore benefit from such care strategies. Healthcare professionals already undertake a number of routine assessments of patients’ health, for example their risk of falling or developing a pressure sore. This project aims to use this routinely available information to develop a method of identifying those patients who are at high risk of developing NV-HAP.
The project will involve collecting information from the case notes of 822 elderly patients previously admitted to two acute NHS Hospital Trusts. We will identify 411 patients (cases) who developed NV-HAP during their stay in hospital and 411 similar patients (controls) who did not develop NV-HAP. We will compare cases with controls by looking through case notes and identifying which patients had factors that might have increased their risk of developing NV-HAP. We will use statistical tests to find out which of these factors best predict that a patient will develop NV-HAP.
REC name
London - Surrey Borders Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/LO/1978
Date of REC Opinion
13 Dec 2019
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion