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. 2014 Apr;70(2):120-8.
doi: 10.1016/j.mjafi.2013.09.005. Epub 2013 Dec 17.

Emerging organisms in a tertiary healthcare set up

Inam Danish Khan  1 , Ajay Kumar Sahni  2 , Reena Bharadwaj  3 , Mahima Lall  4 , A K Jindal  5 , V K Sashindran  6
Affiliations

Emerging organisms in a tertiary healthcare set up

Inam Danish Khan et al. Med J Armed Forces India. 2014 Apr.

Abstract

Background: One-tenth of all infectious diseases are attributable to emerging organisms. As emerging organisms sporadically affect a relatively small percentage of population they are not studied at large. This study was aimed at studying the characteristics of emerging organisms encountered from various clinical samples in an apex tertiary care multispeciality teaching and research hospital.

Methods: 16,918 positive isolates obtained from 66,323 culture samples processed in the clinical microbiology lab of an apex multispeciality hospital during 2011-2012 were included after a pilot study. Both manual and automated systems were used for identification and antimicrobial susceptibility. The frequency of isolation, sources, referring centers, resistance and susceptibility profiles, phenotypic characteristics and number of reports in PubMed were studied.

Results: Out of 16,918 isolates, 13,498 (79.78%) were Gram negative bacteria, 3254 (19.23%) were Gram positive bacteria and 166 (0.98%) were yeasts. A total of 483 (2.85%, 95% CI 2.6%-3.1%) emerging organisms including 116 (0.69%, 95% CI 0.57%-0.81%) emerging species were identified comprising 54 genera.

Conclusion: Emerging organisms are likely to evade routine identification or be disregarded as non-contributory. Astute efforts directed at identification of emerging isolates, decisions by clinical microbiologists and treating physicians and containment of infection are required.

Keywords: Antimicrobial resistance; Automated microbiology systems; Emerging organisms; Microbial identification.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Distribution of emerging organisms by category.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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