Patients’ Medical Charts in Intensive Care Unit: A Potential Source of Nosocomial Infections

Abstract

This  study  was  carried  out  to  determine  the  degree  of  contamination  of  patients’  medical  charts  in  ICU settings.  A total of 100 medical charts were randomly selected from ICU.  The swab samples were collected from  outer  surface  of  charts  with  sterile  swabs  moistened  with  sterile  normal  saline.  The swabs were immediately transferred to Trypticase soy broth and incubated aerobically for 48h and then subcultured  inMacConkey,  Blood  and  Eosin-methylene  blue  agars.  The isolates were identified by using standard microbiological and biochemical techniques.  Out  of  100  charts  sampled,  89%  charts  were  found  to  be contaminated  with  pathogenic  or  potentially  pathogenic  bacteria.  Staphylococcus aureus was the most commonly isolated bacteria in ICU (n=32, 28.3%) followed by Citrobacter freundii (n=27, 24%), Coagulase Negative Staphylococci (CoNS) (n=23, 20.3%) and Acinetobacter spp. (n=12, 10.7%).  It is concluded that medical chart contains pathogenic and potentially pathogenic bacteria. Thus, contaminated charts can act as vector of pathogenic bacteria and source of cross-infection in hospital.Journal of Institute of Science and TechnologyVol. 21, No. 1, 2016, page: 48-51