'International Medical Publisher (Fundacion de Neurociencias)'
Abstract
Background: Acinetobacter baumannii is a troublesome and increasingly problematic healthcare-associated pathogen, especially in critical care unit. These organisms have a capacity for long-term survival in the hospital environment. Aim: This study aimed to investigates the drug resistance patterns of Acinetobacter baumannii strains isolated from burn ICU (BICU). Method: The antibiotic susceptibility of 176 isolates to imipenem, meropenem, gentamicin, ciprofloxacin, fusidic acid, amikacin, trimethoprim, cefepime, ceftazidime, ceftriaxone, cefotaxime, and amoxicillin-calvulanic acid was determined by disk agar diffusion test. Findings: The overall proportion of A. baumannii isolates among all clinical isolates has increased slightly throughout the study from 3.5% to 4.2%. Carpabenem remained the antimicrobial most active antibiotic against A. braumannii isolates compared with other antibiotics, during the two years there was an increase in resistance from 50.6% to 71.3% to imipenem (P<0.01), and meropenem from 50.6% to 74.5% (P<0.01). ICU isolates exhibited significantly higher level of resistance to imipenem (71.6%) and meropenem (73.4%) compared with non-ICU strains (42.6% and 44.6% respectively) (P<0.01). Conclusion: In conclusion, the high prevalence of multidrug resistance A. baumannii (97.7%) and increased resistance to imipenem and meropenem in our unit might be due to long hospital stay, intubation, surgery and previous antibiotic prescription. It would seem that practices to prevent cross-transmission are more important in controlling resistance
