Practical use of povidone-iodine antiseptic in the maintenance of oral health and in the prevention and treatment of common oropharyngeal infections

Kanagalingam, J.; Feliciano, R.; Hah, J. H.; Labib, H.; Le, T. A.; Lin, J.-C.

Respiratory infections in the hospital setting such as aspiration pneumonia or VAP are major issues, especially in elderly people and immunocompromised patients and are associated with high rates of mortality (70, 71) . Moreover, individuals with gastrooesophageal reflux disease (10-20%) can develop recurrent or chronic aspiration pneumonia because of aspiration of gastric contents into the lungs (72) . Pneumonia is also common in patients on mechani- cal ventilation resulting from aspiration of salivary bacteria into the lower respiratory tract (73) . In a prospective, randomised study, the efficacy of a PVP-I rinse on the prevalence of VAP in patients with severe head trauma who were expected to need ventilation, was assessed. When compared with those who received saline and control (no rinsing), significantly fewer patients in the PVP-I group (p = 0.03 and 0.01, respectively) developed VAP (74) .