After a California Veterans Affairs hospital instituted a postoperative pneumonia prevention program for patients in its surgical ward, it saw lowered case rates for the condition, according to a study published in JAMA Surgery.
The study outlines the results of a postoperative pneumonia prevention program from 2008 to 2012. Prior to the prevention program implementation, the case rate of postoperative pneumonia was 0.78 percent. After the intervention, there were 18 cases of postoperative pneumonia among 4,099 patients, for a case rate of 0.44 percent. That means the case rate of postoperative pneumonia decreased 43.6 percent.
The program involved several steps, including the following:
• Ongoing education for surgical nurses on pneumonia prevention
• Coughing and deep-breathing exercises with incentive spirometer
• Oral hygiene with chlorhexidine twice a day
• Walking
• Sitting up to eat
• Elevating the head of the bed
"Our study supports the concept that successful and sustained reduction of pneumonia among postoperative patients requires multiple performance measures and unrelenting standardized quality improvement efforts," the authors concluded.
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