Bacterial contamination of mobile phones of healthcare workers at a tertiary care hospital

Abstract

Introduction: Mobile phones are used extensively by the healthcare workers who are completely unaware of the microbial load they carry. There are no guidelines on the cleanliness of these mobile phones which makes them an important source of hospital acquired infections among the patients in the hospital. Objectives: This study was conducted to determine the extent of bacterial colonisation of mobile phones from health care workers and elucidate its antibiotic sensitivity pattern. Settings and Design: The present study was hospital based cross-sectional study, carried out to analyse the bacterial colonization of mobile phones of healthcare personnel in the tertiary care hospital for a period of three months from 1st July 2017 to 30th September 2017. Materials and Methods: A sterile swab moistened with sterile normal saline was rolled over the exposed areas of the mobile phones of 117 health care personnel which included 18 samples from technicians, 35 from nurses, 29 from ward boys, and 35 samples from doctors. The swabs were cultured on 5% sheep blood agar and MacConkey agar plates. Plates were incubated aerobically at 37°C for 24 hours. The growth was identified by standard microbiological techniques and their antibiotic sensitivity pattern was carried out as per CLSI guidelines. Statistical Analysis: Statistical Analysis was done using MedCalc and Microsoft excel. Results: Overall bacterial contamination was found to be 92% (108) and maximum contamination was noted on the mobile phones of laboratory technicians (100%). All the healthcare workers showed polymicrobial growth on their mobile phones and maximum isolates were observed on the mobile phones of ward boys. Staphylococcus aureus, 44 (37.6%) was the most common isolate followed by Coagulase Negative Staphylococcus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, 14 each (12%) and Acinetobacter species 6(5.1%). These isolates were resistant to commonly available antibiotics like Co-Trimoxazole, Ampicillin, and Amoxyclav. MRSA was found to be 16% in our study, whereas ESBL and MBL were not noted. Conclusions: As these organisms can become an important source of Hospital acquired infection, strict hand hygiene, decontamination of mobile phones and restriction of the use of mobile phones in high risk areas should be advocated.

Prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus on cellphones of healthcare workers in Najran University hospital, Najran City (Saudi Arabia)

“…As shown in Table 4, our antimicrobial susceptibility results indicate that all S. aureus isolates were resistant to methicillin and ceftazidine (100%). In the present study, the results demonstrated the sensitivity of isolates to penicillin, although this result does not agree with most studies that report the resistance of S. aureus to penicillin (Banawas, 2018;Siddiqui et al, 2018). This finding allows reusing penicillin as it has the advantage of being highly successful for prophylaxis and treatment.…”

“…In this study, all S. aureus isolates were sensitive to vancomycin, which is considered the last resort and line of antibiotics in humans. This finding agrees with the results obtained by Banawas et al (2018) and Siddiqui et al (2018). All isolates resistant to methicillin based on an insensitivity test suggest the presence of mecA gene, named MRSA (Geo et al, 2007).…”

“…This study evaluated the prevalence of MRSA on the cellphones of HCWs in Najran University hospital. The percentage of MRSA in the present study was 4.16%; this percentage is considered a slightly higher percentage than reported by Banawas et al (2018), who found a lower range (2.6%) although Siddiqui et al (2018) detected a higher contamination rate (37.6%) that was considered dangerous to humans. Zakai et al (2016) found 16.2% of the cellphones of medical students.…”

“…Excess fluid was aspirated, spread the suspension by swab and the plate could dry for 30 min. Using sterile forceps, the antibiotic disc was gently applied on the plate and incubated at 37 °C for 24 h. Thirteen standard antibiotics were used and included penicillin-G (P), oxacillin (OX), cefixime (CFM), methicillin (MET), vancomycin (VAC), erythromycin (E), tigecycline (TGC), gentamicin (G), amikacin (AK), meropenem (MRP), ceftazidime (CAZ), aztreonam (ATM) and imipenem (IMI) (Siddiqui et al, 2018). The S. aureus ATCC25923 strain was used as a control monitor quality control of each batch of plates.…”

DETEKSI BAKTERI Staphylococcus sp PADA SWAB HANDPHONE DENGAN TINGKAT PERSONAL HYGIENE MAHASISWA IIK BHAKTI WIYATA KEDIRI

“…Adapun hasil yang diperoleh dapat dilihat pada Tabel 1. (Kotgire et al, 2020) Untuk pencegahan infeksi adalah meminimalkan resiko kontaminasi pada handphone.…”