Resistance Trends of Bacterial Pathogens Isolated from ICUs of European-Gaza Hospital, Palestine

Background: The emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance among bacterial pathogens have increased to worrying levels in recent years. Multi-drug resistant (MDR) bacteria are known to cause life-threatening infections especially in Intensive Care Units (ICUs). Objectives: To study the type, frequency and resistance trends of bacterial pathogens isolated from the ICU departments of the European Gaza Hospital. Materials and methods: Prospective cross-sectional study was performed on the patients who were admitted to the ICU departments of the European Gaza Hospital for nine months. All isolated bacterial pathogens were diagnosed phenotypically and biochemically, tested against the most common used antibiotics by disc diffusion method. Results: Ninety clinically significant isolates obtained from 476 various clinical specimens from ICU patients were included in this study (18.9%). The isolated organisms include both Gram positive cocci and Gram-negative rods. Most of the isolated pathogens were MDR. The most effective agents against MRSA were vancomycin (81.8%) and amikacin (72.7%). Moreover, in addition, meropenem, amikacin and piperacillin-tazobactam were the most effective antimicrobial agents against Gram negative isolates except Acinetobacter baumannii isolates which exhibited high resistance to all tested antimicrobial agents, including the meropenem, were more than half found to be resistant (52.3%). Conclusion: Most of Enterobacteriaceae members and other Gram-negative rods isolated in this study from the ICU departments of the European-Gaza hospital were found to be MDR.