ARTICLE Common isolation of New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase 1-producing Enterobacteriaceae in a large surgical

Abstract This study sought to monitor the presence of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) and the pro-portion NewDelhi metallo-beta-lactamase 1 (NDM-1)-produc-ing bacteria between August 2010 and December 2012 in a surgical hospital in Vietnam. We identified 47 CRE strains from a total of 4,096 Enterobacteriaceae isolates (1.1 %) that were NDM-1-positive from 45 patients admitted to 11 different departments, with the majority being from the urology depart-ment. The NDM-1 gene was found in seven different species. Genotyping revealed limited clonality of NDM-1-positive iso-lates. Most of the isolates carried the NDM-1 gene on a plasmid and 17.8 % (8/45) of those were readily transferable. We found five patients at admission and one patient at discharge with NDM-1-positive bacteria in their stool. From 200 screening environmental hospital samples, five were confirmed to be NDM-1-positive and included Acinetobacter species (n=3) and Enterobacter aerogenes (n=2). The results reveal that NDM-1-producing Enterobacteriaceae are commonly isolated in patients admitted to a Vietnamese surgical hospital and are also detected in the hospital environment