Acinetobacter infections prevalence and frequency of the antibiotics resistance: comparative study of intensive care units versus other hospital units

INTRODUCTION: This study aims to determine the Acinetobacter sp clinical isolates frequency and its antibiotic susceptibility pattern by comparing results obtained from the Intensive Care Units (ICUs) to that of other units at the Mohammed V Military Teaching Hospital in Rabat. METHODS: This is a retrospective study over a 2-years period where we collected all clinical isolates of Acinetobacter sp obtained from samples for infection diagnosis performed on hospitalized patients between 2012 to 2014. RESULTS: During the study period, 441 clinical and non-repetitive isolates of Acinetobacter sp were collected representing 6.94% of all bacterial clinical isolates (n = 6352) and 9.6% of Gram negative rods (n = 4569). More than a half of the isolates were from the ICUs and were obtained from 293 infected patients of which 65, 2% (191 cases) were males (sex ratio = 1.9) and the median age was 56 years (interquartile range: 42-68 years). Acinetobacter clinical isolates were obtained from respiratory samples (44.67%) followed by blood cultures (14.51%). The resistance to ciprofloxacin, ceftazidime, piperacillin / tazobactam, imipenem, amikacin, tobramycin, netilmicin, rifampicin and colistin was respectively 87%, 86%, 79%, 76%; 52%, 43%, 33% 32% and 1.7%. The difference in resistance between the ICUs and the other units was statistically significant (p <0.05) except for colistin, tetracycline and rifampicin. CONCLUSION: This paper shows that solving the problem of prevalence and high rate of multidrug resistant Acinetobacter infection which represents a therapeutic impasse, requires the control of the hospital environment and optimizing hands hygiene and antibiotics use in the hospital.