One year of microbiological surveillance in Intensive Care Unit of San Biagio Hospital in Domodossola (VB) ASL 14

Microbiological surveillance in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is essential not only for empirical antimicrobial therapy, but also for epidemiological suggestion. We describe one year observation (2006) of microbiological samples, especially bronchial samples, in a polivalent ICU in San Biagio Hospital (Domodossola ASL 14 Piemonte) where systematic culture of sputum (surveillance cultures) was routinely performed. During this period, 208 bronchial samples were collected and cultured.Among these, 56 (27%) resulted positive for bacteria. Gram positive were isolated in 31% of cases (the most frequent being Staphylococcus aureus), whereas Gram negative in the remaining 69% (especially Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli). The antibiotic resistance to oxacillin was found in 50% of staphylococcal strains. Pseudomonas was susceptible to aminoglycosides, carbapenems and cefepime; all strains were ß lactamase producer. The tabular of dose defining day for the same year demonstrates that penicillin with β lactamase inhibitor is the most employed in our ICU (DDD 36%). This paper confirmed that systematic culture is important to get informations for epidemiology, antimicrobial strategies and control of multidrug resistant clusters.