The Prevalence and Pattern of Acinetobacter Antibiotic Resistance in the Patients Admitted to Imam Reza Hospital in Kermanshah, Iran (2016 - 2018)

Acinetobacter is a gram-negative coccobacillus, which is widespread in nature and causes several nosocomial infections, such as pneumonia, meningitis, endocarditis, skin and soft tissue infections, conjunctivitis, and bacteremia. Acinetobacter has also demonstrated resistance against multiple antimicrobial agents.

The present study aimed to investigate the antibiotic resistance pattern of the isolated Acinetobacter strains from the patients admitted to various wards of Imam Reza hospital in Kermanshah, Iran.

This descriptive, cross-sectional study was performed on 726 patients with positive Acinetobacter cultures at Imam Reza hospital during 2016 - 2018. Bacterial isolates were identified using laboratory tests and based on the CLSI protocol, and the standard disc-diffusion method was used assess antibiotic susceptibility. Data analysis was performed in SPSS version 20.

Most of the Acinetobacter-positive cases were isolated from the intensive care units (75.88%) and sputum (73.3%) and urine samples (10.1%). In addition, the highest and lowest resistance rate of the isolates was observed against ceftriaxone (96.6%) and ampicillin-sulbactam (58.7%), respectively.

According to the results, the bacterial isolates were multiple-drug resistant and showed resistance to ciprofloxacin, ceftazidime, cotrimoxazole, ceftriaxone, cefepime, gentamicin, imipenem, ampicillin, ampicillin-sulbactam, and  amikacin. The high resistance to imipenem is rather alarming as it is considered the ’last resort’ in the treatment of the infections caused by gramnegative bacteria. Therefore, monitoring programs are recommended to prevent the misuse of this drug in hospitals.