Profound effect of study design factors on ventilator-associated pneumonia incidence of prevention studies: benchmarking the literature experience

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The ventilator-associated pneumonia incident proportion (VAP-IP) is highly variable among control groups of studies of methods for its prevention. The objective here is to develop and validate a literature-derived benchmark against which these groups can be profiled. METHODS: A literature search yielded 95 cohort groups and control and intervention groups of 150 studies of either non-antimicrobial or antimicrobial methods of VAP prevention. The 95 cohort groups comprise a benchmark set (30 groups), from which the reference funnel plot (RFP) was derived, and a search set (65 groups), against which the benchmark was validated. The VAP-IP data of the benchmark set were found in five..