Treatment of Hospital-Acquired Infections in Patients with Cirrhosis – New Challenges

BACKGROUND: Hospital acquired infections (HAI) in the cirrhotic patients contribute to hepatic decompensation. With emergence of bacterial drug resistance, designing the treatment protocol of HA infection has become the foremost challenge. PURPOSE: To analyze the resistance pattern of organisms isolated from hospital-acquired (HA) infections and determine appropriate antibiotics treatment protocols for these infections. STUDY DESIGN: A prospective hospital based observational study was undertaken. PATIENTS AND METHODS: The present study was conducted over 18 months at Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore, Karnataka, India. Patients with suspected HA infections were subjected to clinical, hematological and microbiological evaluation. Antibiotic sensitivity evaluation was undertaken for the bacteria isolated from these patients. RESULTS: During the study period, 398 patients with cirrhosis were 472 times admitted to the hospital for treatment. Out of these patients, 40 patients were diagnosed with 50 HA infections. Fifty five different organisms were isolated from these infections. It was found that these 55 bacteria isolates comprised 30 (54.54%) gram-negative (GN) and 25 (45.45%) gram-positive (GP) bacteria. Quite seriously, extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) producers and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) were detected in 40% and 58% of GN and GP infections respectively. A total of 36 (65.4%) and (14.5%) 8 out of 55 isolated organisms exhibited multi–drug resistance (MDR) and extensive drug resistance (XDR) behavior, respectively. CONCLUSION: Cirrhosis patients with HA infection possess higher prevalence of MDR and XDR infections. In such sick patients, cephalosporin and quinolones are not the appropriate empirical antibiotics. Herein, we propose a tigecycline with carbapenem like meropenem and vancomycin based empirical antibiotics protocol to be prescribed for such patients. De-escalation is advised after the culture sensitivity report is obtained.