If a medical condition is described as "nosocomial", what does it mean?

A nosocomial illness (the word derives from a Latin term for hospital, and, traced further back, to a Greek one for disease) is one that occurs in a hospital or other healthcare facility.

It can be caused by various agents, including infection by other patients or health professionals, as well as poor hygiene, vermin, fungal spores, air droplets, and catheters.

Often, pneumonia-like symptoms are the result of such infections, but they can also lead to vomiting bugs, and necrosis.

The phenomenon was first addressed by the Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis (1813-1865) who played a particular role in addressing hygiene on maternity wards. It has been suggested that, ironically, he died of such an infection himself, but this is open to dispute.

To this day, prevention of such conditions is achieved by following Semmelweis's principles of both personal and environmental hygiene in healthcare facilities.

More Info: en.wikipedia.org

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8 Comments

Christopher Skinner

More people die of nosocomial disease than cigarette smoking

klmilles

Semmelweis, being Jewish, was relegated to obstetrics when he began his medical career (because it was a field of lower prestige and importance in society's eyes). He linked the high rate of maternal deaths to the failure of his medical colleagues and students to wash their hands after performing autopsies and the directly attending delivering women. He mandated that they wash their hands in chlorinated water (until no smell of the dead bodies could be detected) prior to attending delivering women. The death rate plummeted, but the medical community further rejected him. That he died of a blood infection due to a beating he received, does, indeed, speak volumes. Jews have long mandated washing as a part of ritual cleanliness, and this probably had a role in his focus.