Community- and Healthcare-Associated Clostridium difficile Infections, Finland, 2008-2013

Prudent use of antimicrobial drugs in outpatient settings is needed for reducing the burden of infection.
We evaluated incidence, case-fatality rate, and trends of community-associated (CA) and healthcare-associated (HA) Clostridium difficile infections (CDIs) in Finland during 2008–2013. CDIs were identified in the National Infectious Disease Register, deaths in the National Population Information System, hospitalizations to classify infections as CA or HA in the National Hospital Discharge Register, and genotypes in a reference laboratory. A total of 32,991 CDIs were identified: 10,643 (32.3%) were CA (32.9 cases/100,000 population) and 22,348 (67.7%) HA (69.1/100,000). Overall annual incidence decreased from 118.7/100,000 in 2008 to 92.1/100,000 in 2013, which was caused by reduction in HA-CDI rates (average annual decrease 8.1%; p