The Predominant Microorganism During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Toxicological Intensive Care Unit

Although many studies have investigated the prevalence of hospital infections during the COVID-19 pandemic, the results are still challenging.

In this routine data-based study, the medical records of 2213 poisoned patients admitted to the Toxicological Intensive Care Unit (TICU) of the Loghman Hakim Hospital from 2018 to 2022 were retrospectively reviewed. After the implementation of exclusion criteria, 220 patients were separated into the control and case groups. The information of the patients was extracted based on a preplanned form and analyzed with SPSS software, version 26.

Unlike the prepandemic period, when Staphylococcus aureus was the predominant pathogen, during the pandemic period, the predominant pathogen in tracheal culture was Acinetobacter spp., which increased from 11.3% in the prepandemic period to 14.9% during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, coagulase-negative staphylococci in blood culture and Enterobacter spp. in tracheal culture both significantly decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic (P=0.035 and P=0.05, respectively), while Streptococcus viridans in the tracheal culture and Enterococcus in the urine culture both significantly increased (P=0.013).

Although in the prepandemic period, S. aureus was usually the most common pathogen among poisoned patients in TICU, the predominant pathogen changed to Acinetobacter spp. during the COVID-19 pandemic period. Some hospital-acquired infections decreased and others increased in a different way between the two groups.