The Prevalence of Bacteria Isolated From Endotracheal Tubes of Patients in Golestan Hospital, Ahvaz, Iran, and Determination of Their Antibiotic Susceptibility Patterns

:nosocomial infections including infections of surgical wounds, urinary tract and lower respiratory tract infections are a major public health problem in hospi-tals worldwide. bacterial infections in the lower respiratory tract especially due to gram negative bacilli, has remained a major complication of tracheal intubation in patients requiring ventilator equipments. objectives: the aim of present study was to determine the presence or absence of bacte-rial infections in tracheal tubes and determination of their antimicrobial susceptibility patterns.materials and methods: in this study, specimens were collected from tracheal tubes of patients with endotracheal aspiration. the specimens were microbiologically investigat-ed and the isolated bacteria were identifed by using standard cultural and biochemical tests. the antibiotic susceptibility testing was then performed on the isolates by disc dif-fusion method according to clsi guideline.results: in total, 278 specimens had positive culture with 508 isolates. based on the bacteri-ology results, enterobacter spp. with 209 cases (41.14%) were the most prevalent genera isolat-ed from positive cultures. the number and frequency of other isolated bacteria were as fol-low: pseudomonas aeruginosa 78 (15.35%), e. coli 71 (13.97.2%), coagulase negative staphylococci 75 (14.76%), staphylococcus aureus 71 (13.97%), and proteus spp. 4 (0.79%). antimicrobial suscep-tibility testing revealed that the most resistant gram negative isolate was p. aeruginosa with highest resistance against cefxime (70.8%), and coagulase negative staphylococci were the most resistant gram positive isolates with highest resistance against oxacillin (84.2%).conclusions: in conclusion, this survey indicates the emergence of antibiotic resistant infections in the studied hospital. so, there is a need to improve the efectiveness of inte-grated infection control programs to control and manage nosocomial infections caused by highly resistant organisms.