Oropharyngeal Decontamination With Antiseptics to Prevent Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia: Rethinking the Benefits of Povidone-lodine.

The authors discuss on the oropharyngeal decontamination for the prevention of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP). The authors say that oropharyngeal colonization plays a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of VAP and the analysis of the oropharyngeal microbiota of human using real-time PCR demonstrated bacterial diversity. They state that the oropharyngeal colonization with respiratory pathogens is prevented by physical-chemical properties of oral mucosa surface, immunoglobulins and proteases.