The incidence of nosocomial infections that occur in veterinary hospitals has not been established. There is evidence, however, that nosocomial infections are of great consequence in veterinary medicine and can have considerable negative effects on the individual patient as well as on the veterinary hospital as a whole. Establishing a baseline rate of infection using surveillance techniques will help investigators to ascertain the proportion of infections that can be prevented using infection control measures as well as help determine which infection control measures are effective at reducing rates of nosocomial infections in veterinary hospitals.

The purposes of this study were to design and evaluate the use of a syndromic surveillance system for detection of nosocomial events and use this system to estimate rates of occurrence of common nosocomial events, and evaluate risk factors for the development of nosocomial events among hospitalized dog, cat, and horse patients considered to be at higher than average risk for nosocomial events in multiple veterinary referral hospitals in the United States. Clinicians actively performed syndromic surveillance on hospitalized patients and reported their results no later than the time of the patient's discharge from the hospital. Adjusted rates of nosocomial events were estimated using Poisson regression, and risk factors associated with an increased risk of developing a nosocomial event were analyzed using multivariable logistic regression.

Adjusting for hospital of admission, 19.7% (95%CI: 14.5, 26.7) of horses, 16.3% (95%CI: 14.3, 18.5) of dogs, and 12% (95%CI: 9.3, 15.5) of cats included in this study were reported to have experienced a nosocomial event occur during hospitalization. The only risk factor found to have a positive association with the development of a nosocomial event in all three species was placement of a urinary catheter. Surgical site inflammation and intravenous catheter site inflammation were two of the most commonly reported events across all species.

Results of this study suggest that nosocomial event rates can be established using syndromic surveillance systems in multiple hospitals. Data pertinent to risk factors for the occurrence of nosocomial events can also be effectively collected using the same technique. Further research is warranted in order to evaluate how applicable these results are to other veterinary healthcare settings.