Enterococcal Infections Among Patients Admitted in a Tertiary Care Hospital in Rajasthan

Abstract

newline Enterococci are Gram positive bacteria, which mainly form gastrointestinal newlineflora. Enterococcus has consistently ranked among the most frequent pathogen newlinecausing significant hospital-acquired infections with high morbidity and mortality. newlineEnterococcal infections are difficult to treat, as this bacterium has intrinsic newlineresistance to various antibiotics and also can acquire resistance against other newlineantibiotics available for treatment. Enterococcus develops acquired resistance to newlineseveral classes of antibiotics either by mutation or by transfer of plasmids and newlinetransposons. newlineThe purpose of this study was to characterize the incidence, clinical, newlinemicrobiological features and antibiotic susceptibility pattern of prevalence newlineEnterococcal infections in patients and critical care units including pediatrics and newlinegynae wards in Rajasthan. newlineIn our study we have examined 280 samples of in patients and critical care newlineunits. Distribution of Enterococcal infection in various age groups and sex showed newlinefemales (55%) has higher incidence than males (45%). newlineThe most affected age group with Enterococcal infections was 21-30 years. newlineThe clinical prevalence of Enterococci in our health care setup was highly newlinesignificant and alarming. newlineThe overall prevalence of Enterococci among various clinical specimens newlinetested routinely during the study period was 8.61%. Our study showed that pus newlinespecimens had a higher prevalence rate of 10.30% while urine and blood specimens newlineshowed a prevalence rate of 8.27% and 8.03% respectively and rest of specimens newlinewhich were throat swab and vaginal swab showed prevalence rate of 7.33% and newline7.50% respectively. newlineEnterococcal infections were more common in OPD (161) than in IPD cases newline(119). All specimens showed same picture where OPD patients had higher newlineprevalence of Enterococcal infection except in case of blood specimen where IPD newlinepatients had higher prevalence. newlineThe results of antibiotic susceptibility testing showed that among 280 newlineEnterococcal isolates tested 257(91.78%) were susceptible to Linezolid which newlineshowed p