Journal of

Background: Septicemia is a life threatening status and needs rapid antibiotic treatment. Enterobacteri­acea are one of the most important causes of septicemia. So this study is therefore aimed to evaluate antibiotic sus­ceptibility of enterobacteriacea isolates in blood cultures in Shariati Hospital, Tehran, Iran.

Methods: This retrospective study was performed on 138 patients with positive blood culture in Shariati Hospital, Tehran, Iran in 2004, using disk diffusion and Macfarland standard. 

Results: Prevalence of isolated enterobacteriacea was respectively E. coli (n=74, 53.6%), Klebsiella (n=37, 26.8%), Enterobacter (n=21, 15.2%), Citrobacter (n=4, 2.9%), Salmonella paratyphi (n=1, 0.7%) and Proteus mirabilis (n=1, 0.7%). The most antibiotic susceptibility among enterobacteriaceaes was ciprofloxacin (60.4%), cloramphenicol (56.8 %) and gentamycin (49.3%). The most antibiotic re­sistance were seen among cephalotine (78%), cotrimoxazole (62.3 %) and ceftriaxon (57.5 %).

Conclusions: Due to dissimilarity between antibiotic consumption in laboratories and hospitals, it seems that to reach more proper conclusions and choosing better strategy for antibiotic consumption, cooperation should be between laboratories and physicians, plus synergism between drug prescription and antibiotic discs in laboratories.

Background and Aim: Acinetobacters are opportunistic pathogens and one of the important agents of nosocomial infections that causes many infections like septicemia and  pneumonia. For resistance to antibiotics acinetobacters are mentioned as a healthcare system complications and are transmitted by the hands of healthcare workers. This research has performed in order to determine prevalence and antibiotic susceptibility of isolated acinetobacters from blood cultures.

Material and methods: This study was  performed during a nine months period in  shariati hospital. All 750  positive  blood cultures were distinguished and prevalence of acinetobacter and antibiotic susceptibility of isolated acinetobacters were determined  using disk diffusion agar method. Data were analyzed using SPSS software .

Results: According to our findings,133 blood cultures were positive for acinetoloacters(17.7% of cases). The most observed cases were isolated  from emergency ward of hospital (65.5%). Antibiogram  results  using  ciprofloxacin ,cotrimoxasol,gentamicin, ceftazidime, amikacine, tobramicine and ceftriaxone, showed maximum  sensitivity to ciprofloxacine(91%) and  cotrimoxazole (57.5%) and  maximum  resistance to ceftriaxone respectively.

Discussion and Conclusion: Because the most acinetobacter  isolation was from emergency ward of hospital, it seems that a part of such infections is more due to contamination than real infection. Therefore it is  recommended  that a prospective cohort study considering standard  and sterile conditions  during  sampling , by  considering  patients clinical features  has to  be performed.

Background and Aim: Early diagnosis of pregnancy is very important to prevent fetal damage due to specific drug consumption and high-risk behaviors. The objective of this study was to compare the sensitivity and specificity of quantitative agglutination pregnancy tests in urine and rapid β hCG immunoenzymatic assay test in serum as a gold standard.

Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed among 390 women who referred to healthcare centers where their urine samples were tested with latex agglutination (direct agglutination and agglutination inhibition) and the results were compared with rapid β hCG immunoenzymatic assay test in serum as a gold standard.

Results: The sensitivity of direct agglutination (82.05 % ) was more than that of agglutination inhibition (81.2 % ), but the specificity of the tests were equal (99.27 % ). The agreement coefficients between direct agglutination and agglutination inhibition on the one hand and rapid β HCG immunoenzymatic assay on the other were 0.859 and 0.853, respectively.

Conclusion : The possibility of negative results in direct agglutination is more than that of agglutination inhibition, but the specificity of both qualitative tests is equal. Besides, both tests may have an equal possibility of false positive results. Since the occurrence of false negative results in qualitative tests is higher than that in serum gold standard, the negative results of such tests should be confirmed with more sensitive methods such as rapid β hCG immunoenzymatic assay.