Abstract
Objective: Objectives: Acinetobacter baumannii is an important pathogen of infections in many hospitals, especially in intensive care unit patients, conditioned difficulty to control spread and treatment. The objective of the present study is to report the prevalence and antibiotic resistance rates of A. baumannii strains in ICU patients during a five-year period in a tertiary care hospital in Kazakhstan.
Methods: Consecutive, non – duplicate isolates of A. baumannii were collected and processed during the course of routine diagnostic work up from adult patients hospitalized in ICU. Identification of isolates and antibiotic susceptibility testing were performed by Vitek 2 automated system.
Results: In total 325 A. baumannii strains were evaluated. The most frequent of strains were from tracheostomy tubes (67 isolates, 22.1%), followed by tracheal aspirates (58 isolates, 19.1%) and urinary tract (47, 15.5%). The prevalence of A. baumannii strains in ICU was significantly increased from 6.9% in 2011 to 34.1% to 2015 (p=0.002). Most of testing isolates were 96.7% and higher resistant to cephalosporins, carbapenems, quinolones. Lower resistance 50% and highest was obtained to aminoglycosides.
Conclusion: we report for the first time in Central Kazakhstan the prevalence and resistance rates of A. baumannii in ICU in a single tertiary hospital. The present report is alarming because the increasing resistance can lead to no alternative situation on the choice of drugs for the casual treatment of infections caused by extremely resistant A. baumannii strains. J Microbiol Infect Dis 2018; 8(3):83-88.

Key words: Acinetobacter baumannii, carbapenems, increasing resistance, intensive care, prevalence