Establishment of national laboratory standards in public and private hospital laboratories

In September 2007 national standard manual was finalized and officially announced as the minimal quality requirements for all medical laboratories in the country. Apart from auditing laboratories, Reference Health Laboratory has performed benchmarking auditing of medical laboratory network [surveys] in provinces. 12[th] benchmarks performed in Tehran and Alborz provinces, Iran in 2010 in three stages. We tried to compare different processes, their quality and accordance with national standard measures between public and private hospital laboratories. The assessment tool was a standardized checklist consists of 164 questions. Analyzing process show although in most cases implementing the standard requirements are more prominent in private laboratories, there is still a long way to complete fulfillment of requirements, and it takes a lot of effort. Differences between laboratories in public and private sectors especially in laboratory personnel and management process are significant. Probably lack of motivation, plays a key role in obtaining less desirable results in laboratories in public sectors

[ study on fungal colonization of respiratory tract in patients admitted to intensive care units of Sari and Babol hospitals]

Fungi are considered as a life threatening in immunocompromised patients and respiratory tract is the main involvement location. Critically ill patients who are admitted to intensive care units [ICU] may also be susceptible to these infections, because of their conditions. Fungal colonization in respiratory tract maybe consider as a probable source for infection. Therefore, in the present study we evaluatedfungal flora of respiratory tract in patients admitted to ICU. Bronchoalveolar lavage samples were collected by bronchoscope from 45 patients with underlying predisposing conditions for invasive fungal infection twice a week. Samples were homogenated by pancreatin for performance of direct microscopic examination and cultured on Sabouraud's dextrose agar. The grown fungi on culture media were identified by standard mycological procedures. The main underlying predisposing conditions were COPD [22.2%], hematologic malignancy [20.3%] and prolonged stay in the ICU [16.9%]. The mean length of ICU stay was 19.6 days. Overall, 80 samples had positive result in direct examination [76.2%] and culture [71.2%], respectively. The most frequent isolated fungi were Candida [64.7%], Aspergillus [19.3%] and Penicillium [7.9%]. Among Candida and Aspergillus species, C. albicans and A. flavus were most common. In 48.4% of patients, similar fungal species were isolated in both sampling times. The results of our study showed that the ICU patients were susceptible to fungal resistant colonization especially Candida and Aspergillus as two life threatening fungal agents. So we emphasize the control procedures to reduce the fungal infection possibility among ICU patients

Comparing cerumen bacterial flora in acute otitis externa patients and healthy controls

Cerumen is known as ear wax, produced regularly by cerumen and lipid secretary glands. Regarding the effect of Mazandaran province's humid weather on the prevalence of pathogenic microorganisms, this study was performed to determine the bacterial flora of the ear in patients with acute otitis externa and its comparison with healthy subjects. In this case-control study, cerumen was collected and cultured from 40 patients with clinically diagnosed acute otitis externa and 80 healthy controls. The data were finally analyzed using SPSS. In the study group, Staphylococcus aureus [20.8%], Bacillus [18.9%] and Pseudomonas [11.3%] and in the control group Staphylococcus epidermidis [38.7%] and Diphtheroid [22.4%] were the most common bacteria, respectively. The isolated bacteria from cerumen of healthy subjects were totally different from those of acute otitis externa patients