Bacteriological monitoring in the Prague Burns Center

The microbiological aspect of the prevention of nosocomial infections at the Burn Center consists primarily in the surveillance of bacterial flora and its antibiotical resistance. The Prague Burn Center is regularly monitoring the microbial flora. Patients are examined not only by the conventional methods of taking swabs of burned sites, but also by printing method, which allows a semiquantitative assessment of the colonization of burned areas. Simultaneously, investigation of bacterial contamination in the external environment of the department is carried out and the colonization of nursing staff is investigated. In all isolated strains the sensitivity to antibiotics is examined; this is significant from the point of view of current knowledge about therapeutic possibilities and for the antibiotic policy. The typing of bacterial strains makes possible to determine their epidemiological markers, and thus to investigate their spread within the department. The most frequent isolate is S. aureus and the prevalence of MRSA is relatively high. Among gramnegative rods the strains of P. aeruginosa, K. pneumoniae and E. cloacae are most often isolated. Various typing methods revealed endemic spread of particular strains of rarely isolated species (E. agglomerans, S. marcescens, A. baumannii, etc.).