Intensive care unit environment contamination with fungi

The purpose of the study was evaluation of the fungal presence in the environment of an intensive care unit.

The environment testing was carried out at a chest clinic intensive care unit in Cracow, in December 2004. The materials to mycological examinations were sampled simultaneously from indoor air and room walls in 15 rooms: air samples twice daily while samples from the walls once daily, for five days. The findings were processed statistically. The t-test (Student) and F-test (Snedecor) were used. The border value of significance was 0.05.

No fungi were found in 6 air samples out of 150 taken in 15 rooms. The mean number of fungi in the particular rooms in the whole sampling period varied from 172 to 12 c.f.u. x m(-3). Out of 75 samples from the walls, fungi were present only in 19 of them. The mean numbers varied from 0 to 0.37 c.f.u. x cm(-2). The moulds Aspergillus sp., Penicillium sp. and Cladosporium sp. as well as yeast-like fungi Rhodotorula rubra, Candida sp. were most frequently isolated from the indoor air and the walls.

Significant difference between the numbers of fungi sampled in the morning vs in the evening occurred on the first, third and fourth days of sampling (p < 0.001). Yeast-like fungi Rhodotorula rubra and moulds Aspergillus sp., Cladosporium sp., Penicillium sp. were isolated from indoor air in all of the rooms tested.