Study of Incidence, Risk Factors and Antibiotic Sensitivity Pattern of Acinetobacter baumannii in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Background: Recently, Acinetobacter species has emerged as an important pathogen and the prevalence of infection has increased since last two decades worldwide. Objective: To see the impact of Acinetobacter infection in our hospital and antibiotic sensitivity and resistance pattern. Material and Methods: The study was carried out on clinical samples submitted to the Microbiology laboratory in Krishna institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Karad, over a period of one year (July 2012 to June 2013).Various risk factors like length of hospital stay, ICU admission, any interventions done were noted. Identification and antibiotic susceptibility of the isolates was performed using standard protocol. Results: Out of a total 2728 samples, 86 (3.15%) were found to be due to Acinetobacter baumannii. Of the 86 isolates the organism was predominantly isolated from pus samples 48 (55.81%) followed by sputum 17 (19.76%), urine 6 (6.97%) and blood 4 (4.65%). Out of 86 Acinetobacter isolates, 76 (88.37%) showed resistance to Cephalexin, 74 (86.04%) each to Cefotaxime and Ceftazidime. The isolates also showed high level of resistance to Ciprofloxacin (82.55%), Ampicillin (77.90%) and Gentamicin (74.41%). The isolates from urine samples showed 100% sensitivity to Nitrofurantoin. Imipenem and Meropenem were highly active against the isolate with least resistance of 12.79% each. Conclusion: The present study highlights Acinetobacter species as an important pathogen because of multidrug resistant strains jerking in the hospital environment