Epidemiologic Study of Enterobacter cloacae Infection in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit / 병원감염관리

ABSTRACT

Enterobacter cloacae is isolated from 10 newborns in the neonatal Intensive care unit(NICU) of Seoul Red Cross Hospital from April, 1997 to June, 1997. Their gestational age is from 195-299 days(mean 244.3 days), and their birth weight was from 980-4,100g(mean 2,287g). We obtained 16 E, cloacae strains form their blood, urine, endotracheal tube, umbilical catheter and 4 of them were isolated from the same patient at different culture sites. We also obtained another 3 strains of E. cloacae from 14 persons who worked in NICU and 26 places of NICU. We analysed the molecular types of 19 isolates by using rep-PCR method. We get 6 different types of PCR-products from the patients and NICU workers, and NICU environments. We observed that the incidence of E. cloacae was decreased by handwashing and wearing personal plastic gloves during the care of NICU patients.