Effectiveness of a Ventilator Care Bundle to Prevent Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia at the PICU: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Objectives: Ventilator-associated pneumonia is one of the most frequent hospital-acquired infections in mechanically ventilated children. We reviewed the literature on the effectiveness of ventilator care bundles in critically ill children.

Data Sources: Embase, Medline OvidSP, Web-of-Science, Cochrane Library, and PubMed were searched from January 1990 until April 2017.

Study Selection: Studies were included if they met the following criteria: 1) implementation of a ventilator care bundle in PICU setting; 2) quality improvement or multicomponent approach with the (primary) objective to lower the ventilator-associated pneumonia rate (expressed as ventilator-associated pneumonia episodes/1,000 ventilator days); and 3) made a comparison, for example, with or without ventilator care bundle, using an experimental randomized or nonrandomized study design, or an interrupted-times series. Exclusion criteria were (systematic) reviews, guidelines, descriptive studies, editorials, or poster publications.

Data Extraction: The following data were collected from each study: design, setting, patient characteristics (if available), number of ventilator-associated pneumonia per 1,000 ventilator days, ventilator-associated pneumonia definitions used, elements of the ventilator care bundle, and implementation strategy. Ambiguities about data extraction were resolved after discussion and consulting a third reviewer (M.N., E.I.) when necessary. We quantitatively pooled the results of individual studies, where suitable. The primary outcome, reduction in ventilator-associated pneumonia per 1,000 ventilator days, was expressed as an incidence risk ratio with a 95% CI. All data for meta-analysis were pooled by using a DerSimonian and Laird random effect model.

Data Synthesis: Eleven articles were included. The median ventilator-associated pneumonia incidence decreased from 9.8 (interquartile range, 5.8-18.5) per 1,000 ventilator days to 4.6 (interquartile range, 1.2-8.6) per 1,000 ventilator days after implementation of a ventilator care bundle. The meta-analysis showed that the implementation of a ventilator care bundle resulted in significantly reduced ventilator-associated pneumonia incidences (incidence risk ratio = 0.45; 95% CI, 0.33-0.60; p <0.0001; I-2 = 55%).

Conclusions: Implementation of a ventilator-associated pneumonia bundle has the potential to reduce the prevalence of ventilator-associated pneumonia in mechanically ventilated children.