Prevalence of Multidrug-Resistant in Hospital-Acquired Surgical Wound Infections and Bacteremia: Concomitant Analysis of Antimicrobial Resistance Genes.

Background: The study aimed to assess the prevalence of infections among patients with hospital-acquired surgical wound sepsis and bacteremia in surgical wards and identify the antimicrobial susceptibility in these pathogens. Genetic role of erythromycin, vancomycin, and cephalosporin resistance in these pathogens was also examined.

Methods: Two hundred samples were collected from surgical wound infections and 100 blood cultures from patients with suggested bacteremia to identify by phenotypic and genotypic methods. Antimicrobial susceptibility to 12 antimicrobial agents was tested. The presence of resistance genes was examined by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay.

Results: was isolated with a frequency of 24/200 (12%) from surgical wound samples and 2/100 (2%) from blood cultures. All isolates were completely resistant to cefepime, ampicillin, and tetracycline, 96% of isolates were resistant to erythromycin, 53.8% to vancomycin, and 23.1% to linezolid. Multidrug resistance (MDR) was found in 100% of isolates. and genes were present in 20/25 (80%) and 17/25 (68%) of erythromycin-resistant isolates, respectively, 15 (60%) isolates carry both and genes. gene was detected in 71.4% of vancomycin-resistant isolates. All isolates were negative for , and genes.

Conclusion: MDR in all isolates (100%) and high-level resistance to gentamicin, erythromycin, and vancomycin were reported in isolates. In the studied isolates, erythromycin resistance mainly related to the presence of and genes and vancomycin resistance was mainly related to the presence of gene.