Determination of Antibiotic Susceptibility of Bacteria Isolated From Endotracheal Tube in Pulmonary Intensive Care Unit of a Hospital in Bandar Abbas

The present study attempted to determine the antibiotic susceptibility of bacteria isolated from endotracheal tube culture on patients admitted to the intensive care units (ICUs) of Shahid Mohammadi hospital in Bandar Abbas.

This cross-sectional study was conducted on 114 patients hospitalized in the pulmonary ICU of Shahid Mohammadi hospital in Bandar Abbas from March 2018 to March 2019. The samples of the patients’ endotracheal tube secretions were collected for the culture purpose on the first and fifth days of hospitalization in the ICU where the disk diffusion method was used to determine antibiotic susceptibility.

The most common isolated microorganisms from the first day of culture were 26 Acinetobacter spp. isolates (22.8%), 10 Candida isolates (8.8%), and 9 Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates (7.9%). The most common microorganisms which were isolated on the fifth day comprised Acinetobacter spp. with 57 isolates (51.8%), Candida with 6 isolates (5.5%), and P. aeruginosa with 6 isolates (5.5%). The highest resistant bacteria isolated from Acinetobacter spp. samples on the first-day were amikacin (92.3%) and meropenem (84.6%). The highest resistance of P. aeruginosa was against meropenem (77.8%), while the highest resistance of Acinetobacter spp. isolates was found to be amikacin (94.7%) and meropenem (86%) from the fifth-day samples. Further, P. aeruginosa isolates had the highest resistance in meropenem (83.3%), co-trimoxazole, and cefepime (66.7% for each of them).

Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is considered a warning condition due to multidrug-resistant bacteria. According to the present study, the most common VAP-causing bacteria are gram-negative, especially Acinetobacter, with high antibiotic resistance.