Comparison Of Prevalence Of Nosocomial Infections In Opioid Addicts And Non- Addicts AdmittedTo Intensive Care Units

Pharmaceutical Science-Medicine for novel therapy

Abstract

Acquired nosocomial infections include all clinical infections that the patient does not have at the time of admission to the hospital and hours after admission, the patient's natural flora acquires characteristics that become the source of bacterial infections  for  the  patient  himself.  Nosocomial  infections  dramatically  cause  illness  and  death  and  impose  high  costs  on  the hospitalized  patient.  Hence,  this  study  tends  to compare  the  prevalence  of  nosocomial  infections  in  opium  consumers  and healthy patients admitted  to intensive  care units in Bahonar  hospital of Kerman in 2018.This  cohort study was performed  on two groups of 100 patients including  one group of opioid addicts and one group of non-addicts  hospitalized  in intensive  care units of Bahonar hospital in Kerman. The two groups were compared in terms of nosocomial  infections, site of infection, and type of infectious agent, while in intensive care units. In this study, 197 patients were studied, of whom 161 (81.7%) were male and 36 (18.3%) were female; 98 (49.75%) had a history of opioid addiction, while 99 (50.25%) of them had no drug use. Of 197 patients studied, 118 (59.9%) had no infection while 79 (40.1%) had nosocomial infections. Of 98 addicted patients, 41 (41.8%) were uninfected and 57 (58.2%) were infected. Out of 99 non-addict patients, 77 (77.8%) were uninfected and 22 (22.2%) were infected. Fisher exact test showed that incidence of infection was significantly higher in addicted patients (p-value = 0.001) but there was no significant difference between the two groups in type of infection agent (p-value = 0.547). The results of our study showed that prevalence of nosocomial infections in opium addict patients was significantly higher than non-addict patients, with the highest frequency being pneumonia, UTI, wound infection and sepsis, respectively.