Oral Care Protocols for Preventing Non-Ventilator Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia (NV-HAP) in Hospital Settings: A Scoping Review ...

In the hospital setting, aspiration pneumonia is categorized as hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP), the most common hospital-acquired infection. This infection is typically divided into ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) and non-ventilator-associated hospital-acquired pneumonia (NV-HAP), and it is termed stroke-associated pneumonia (SAP) when it occurs in post-stroke patients. Oral care programs have been proposed as preventive measures and are considered cost-effective for hospital settings. Moreover, the implementation of oral care for the prevention of HAP has been studied in conjunction with dysphagia screening and rehabilitation, as well as other preventive bundles. However, in practice, barriers to delivering oral care interventions to patients remain, and the significant impact and approach of these interventions on preventing infections such as NV-HAP and SAP are still unclear. ...