Environmental screening of multi drug resistant organisms in high touch area of critical and non critical units in tertiary care hospital

Introduction: Patient’s environment in Health care settings responsible for causing variety of infections to patients and to the healthcare professions. Many of them are MDRO which may get transmitted as hospitals acquired infections that increases the chances of mortality and morbidity. These study was undertaken to isolate and identify aerobic bacteria with their resistance pattern in high touch areas of critical and noncritical care units of tertiary care hospital in absence of defined outbreaks. Materials and Methods: The cross sectional analytical study was carried out in the Microbiology Department, after obtaining the Institutional Ethics Committee clearance with waiver of consent during a period of two months. A total 100 samples from nine surface locations of critical and non critical care units of tertiary care hospital were included in this study. All tubes were vortexed and 0.5 ml of the peptone water was inoculated immediately on Blood Agar and MacConkey Agar for semi-quantitative estimation of the organisms. Result: The environmental screening for MDROs from high touch areas was carried out in the 650 bedded tertiary care hospital.. A total of 34/126 (26.98%) samples from various areas had the growth of microorganisms where Staphylococcus aureus predominated. 24.60% showed S. aureus growth while 2.38% were E.coli. A total of 47.05% strains were isolated from the critical care areas all of which were S. aureus whereas 52.94% strains were from the non-critical areas. Conclusion: This study established to isolate and identify aerobic bacteria with their resistance pattern in high touch areas of critical and non critical care units of tertiary care hospital in absence of defined outbreak. These creates awareness regarding emerging of MDROs in hospital settings and also leads to improve in imperfect techniques of hand hygiene practices as well as inadequate surface disinfection practices especially in high touch areas. Keywords: MDROs, MRSA, Blood aga