Document Type: Letter to Editor
Authors
1 Department of Laboratory Science, Faculty of Paramedicine, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, IR Iran
2 Department of Medical Parasitology, School of Medical Sciences, Tarbiat Modarres University, Tehran, IR Iran
3 Biotechnology Research Center and Faculty of Paramedicine, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, IR Iran
Keywords
Burn patients are specifically threatened by nosocomial infections [1]. In these patients, the body’s first line of defense is destroyed and immune system functions are decreased, especially in the first week after the burn. As a result, opportunist pathogens quickly attack the patient's body [2]. One such pathogen that greatly threatens the life of a burn patient is Pseudomonas aeruginosa [3, 4]. This study was done on 151 positive-cultured burn patients (with samples taken from the burn scars) hospitalized in Sina Hospital in Tabriz, the only burn treatment hospital in northwestern Iran, from early March 2015 until the end of that year. Among these patients, 60 (39.7%) had Pseudomonas aeruginosa, 37 cases (24.5%) had Acinetobacter, 29 cases (19.2%) had Staphylococcus aureus, 14 cases (9.3%) had Klebsiella, 6 cases (4%) were of E. coli, and 5 cases (3.3%) had Enterobacteriace. This study compared the results of this study and those obtained by Dr. Nahaei et al. regarding the multidrug resistance of isolated Pseudomonas aeruginosa [5] tested on 135 isolated bacteria in the same hospital in the past 10 years (2006). After 10 years, unfortunately, a noticeable increase in resistance to the nine essential, common antibiotics used to treat these strains was observed in both studies (Figure 1). The highest rates of increase were seen with the 3 antibiotics imipenem (25 times), amikacin (4.5 times), and cyprofloxacin (3.7 times), and ceftazidim and pipracilline showed the lowest increase.
To identify resistant strains, it seems necessary to periodically survey the burn patients’ hospital equipment, based on the culturing process, and the use of Pseudomona polyvalent anti-sera in treatment is essential to reducing the rate of increase in the drug resistance of this bacterium. Sadly, it must be confessed that the production of new generation drugs used to fight against this deadly microorganism seriously lags behind the rate of its face-off against antibiotics.
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