Pediatric Catheters Infectivity and Identification of Candida Species Isolated from Hospitalized Patients in Mashhad Pediatric Hospital

Invasive candidiasis in infants has high mortality rate and is often associated with colonization on medical devices such as catheters. Candida colonization is considered as a predisposing factor for Candida related infection. The aim of this study was to evaluate the rate of catheters infectivity by Candida species.

In this descriptive cross-sectional study, sampling was done from catheters of hospitalized children (0-18 years old) in pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) in Mashhad Dr. Sheikh Hospital, June-November 2018. All catheters were evaluated to determine the extent of contamination and early identification of isolates was done by morphological and molecular methods.

The types of catheter infectivity for 114 samples included colonization or infective (n=25 isolates, 21.92%), contamination (n=4, 3.5%), and no growth (n=85 isolates, 56.74%). The most isolated species was C. albicans (n=18, 13.39%), followed by C. glabrata (n=9, 19.56%), C. krusei and C. parapsilosis (n=7, 15.21%, each isolate), C. tropicalis (n=3, 6.25%), and C. lusitaniae and C. kefyr (n=1, 2.17% each isolate).

Isolation of Candida species in 25% of catheters raised the possibility of colonization, considering the catheters as an exogenous potential source of candidiasis which is very important in PICU.