Monitoring the air fungal contamination load in two educational hospitals in Sanandaj, Iran

Opportunistic fungal pathogens are known to increase infection in the health care workers and patients with immune deficiency. This study aimed to investigate the qualitative and quantitative airborne fungal contamination load in two Sanandaj hospitals. In this cross-sectional study, 112 biological samples from 15 different hospital wards were collected for 6 months by using the single-stage Anderson sampler in Sabouraud’s dextrose agar. Data were analyzed for the descriptive and analytical tests using IBMSPSS V.21 software and the air fungal contamination load (AFCL) was calculated (cfu/m3). The average hospital AFCL in Besat and Tovhid was 21.13 and 14.51 cfu/m3, respectively. No statistically significant differences were observed between AFCL and relative humidity (RH) in the two hospital samples (p = 0.495) according to independent t-test, whereas this difference in the average temperature in the hospital wards was significant (p