All issues > Volume 37(12); 1994

Original Article

J Korean Pediatr Soc. 1994;37(12):1669-1675. Published online December 15, 1994.

Acinetobacter Infection in Neonatal Intensive Care Units(NICU)

Won-Gyu WG Bum¹, In-Suk IS Kim¹, Young-Hee YH Kim¹, Young-Youn YY Choi¹, Jae-Sook JS Ma¹, Tai-Ju TJ Hwang¹

¹Department of Pediatrics, Chonnam University Medical School Kwangju, Korea

Abstract

Purpose
: Acinetobacter becomes one of the important organisms in hospital infection especially intensive care units. Recently we experienced four times of outbreaks of Acinetobacter infection in Neonatal Intensive Care Units(NICU), Chonnam University Hospital. Clinical and epidemiologic study was performed to emphasize the importance of hospital infection.
Methods
: During the period from November 1992 to July 1993, twenty-one patiencts of Acinetobacter infection were occurred in NIC. We observed clinical outcomes and bacteriologic characteristics including classic biochemical method and ATB 32GN system and antimicrobial susceptibillity test. We also perfomed many cultures for Acinetobacter from nasal mucus and skins of NICU personnels and equipments at two times and observed its bacteriologic characteristics and plasmid DNA analysis to certify the source of infection.
Results
Isolation rate of Acinetobacter has been gradually increased from 0.38% in 1990 to 4.0% in 1992. Twenty-one patients were noted during the four times of outbreaks which were late Nov. 1992, between late Jan. to early Feb., late March and between late Jne to early July, 1993. Eighteen cases were Acinetobacter baumannii and three cases were Acinetobacter species. Clinical spectrum was diverse such as sepsis, pneumonia, disseminated intravascular coagulopathy, necrotizing enterocolitis, liver absess, and skin infection and mortality was 38.1%, Acinetobacter baumannii was cultured at one skin spencmen of nurse's hand at the second time and showed similar bacteriologic characteristics and plasmid DNA pattern.
Conclusion
We suspcet that Acinetobacter infections were transmitted nosocomially by contamination of NICU personnels.

Keywords :Acinetobacter, NICU, Nosocomial infection