Johns Hopkins Study Shows One of the Deadliest Hospital-Acquired Infections Is Preventable. For some hospital patients, going on a ventilator is often the difference between life and death. About 800,000 hospital patients undergo mechanical ventilation each year in the United States due to a variety of illnesses or conditions, such as a brain injury, stroke or pneumonia. A ventilator can provide much-needed assistance to patients with their breathing. Being on a ventilator, however, also comes with risks and can lead to complications, or ventilator-associated events, such as blood clots, lung damage or ventilator-associated pneumonia — believed to be one of the most common and deadly hospital-acquired infections in the ICU.

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