Bacterial Infections and Antimicrobial Resistance Patterns of Burn Wound Infections: A One Year Study from Burn Hospital, Isfahan, Iran

Infections due to burn wounds are serious because of their effects on the course of the disease and its consequences. The rate of burn wound infection is very high in developing countries. The purpose of this study was to identify common bacterial agents causing burn wound infection and determine antimicrobial susceptibility patterns in a burn Hospital, Isfahan, Iran.

This cross-sectional study was conducted from 2017 to 2018 on all patients with burn wound infection. Burn wounds suspected of infection were collected aseptically and traditional bacteriological methods were used to identify the causes of infection. Antimicrobial resistance test was done by the disk diffusion method in accordance with CLSI recommendations.

From the total of 1500 wound culture, 957(63.8%) samples were detected as positive. The highest rate of infection was in the ICU ward and the lowest was in the restoration ward. The most common gram-negative bacteria were Acinetobacter baumannii (34.9%) with the highest and the lowest antibiotic resistance to Ceftazidime and Tobramycin, respectively. Among recovered Gram-positive isolates, Staphylococcus aureus (10.2%) were the predominant isolates with the highest and the lowest antibiotic resistance to Penicillin and Vancomycin, respectively.

Due to the variable nature of antibiotic susceptibility patterns and pathogens causing burn wound infection, continuous evaluation, detection of dominant bacterial infections and sensitivity patterns to locally available antibiotics in burn wound patients in order to modify the drug regimen for proper antibiotic treatment is important and seems reasonable.