A descriptive study of vancomycin resistant enterococci in Tertiary Care Hospital of Western India

Abstract

Enterococci are second most commonly isolated hospital-acquired pathogen from urinary tract and wounds. Being notorious organism enterococci has presented treatment challenges resulted in newer drug development followed by resistance development in segments; such as Vancomycin. Present study aims at detecting prevalence, distribution and susceptibility patterns of Vancomycin Resistant Enterococci (VRE) found in clinical isolates.A descriptive study was carried out in the Microbiology department of Tertiary care hospital, Western India including a total of 36,027 clinical isolates received in the duration over 2 years from indoor patients across disciplines. Enterococci were recognized by standard biochemical tests. Anti-microbial susceptibility testing was done as per CLSI guideline. VRE was distinguished by disc diffusion method and Minimum Inhibitory Concentration Test. Qualitative data were presented as proportions.On susceptibility testing, the prevalence of VRE was found out to be 11.13%. Maximum number of VRE isolates were from Urine (49.06%), followed by blood culture (32.08%), and swab (5.66%). Among VRE; 56.6% isolates were E. Faecium followed by other enterococcus (35.85%) and E. Faecalis (7.55%) respectively. Highest resistance was found for penicillin, ampicillin and levofloxacin, while most sensitive were linezolid and fosfomycin.Considering versatile ability to advance and transmit antimicrobial resistance, VRE represents a bottle neck in treatment strategies. Rational prescription of antibiotic, VRE surveillance and timely antibiogram in admitted cases is the need of hour.