Study: One in 25 Hospital Patients Will Develop Infection

According to a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, about one in every 25 people will develop an infection while seeking treatment at a hospital. Of the roughly 721,800 patients who acquired infections during the year studied (2011), 75,000 died; however, the study did not investigate how often the infections caused or contributed to these deaths.

The most common types of infection, accounting for almost one-quarter of them, were pneumonia and surgical site infections. These were followed by gastrointestinal infections (such as C. diff), urinary tract infections and bloodstream infections.

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