Acinetobacter spp. - A Serious Enemy Threatening Hospitals Worldwide

Acinetobacter is gram-negative, strictly aerobic bacteria. It is a heterogeneous group of organisms that is ubiquitous, widely distributed in nature. Surviving in hospital environment (they are able to survive on dry particles and dust up to ten days, more then four months on both moist and dry surfaces such as PVC, rubber, ceramics and various types of medical equipment) they are an important cause of infection in immunocompromised patients. A. baumannii, the major cause of intrahospital infections, exhibits a remarkable ability to rapidly develop antibiotic resistance to several classes of antimicrobial agents that led to MDRA, or to almost all currently available antibacterial agents, except to polymixins. There is an increasing incidence of these infections in hospital intensive care units. The prevalence currently ranges from 2% to 10% of all gram-negative bacterial infections in Europe and about 2.5% of them in the United States. Good treatment choice, combined with infection control measures should help in preventing intrahospital spread of multiresistant strains of Acinetobacter spp. Nevertheless, their adaptation mechanisms to antibiotic selection pressure suggest that this problem will continue into the future.