The microbiological characteristics of patients with crush syndrome after the Wenchuan earthquake

Abstract

To improve the treatment of infectious diseases in patients with crush syndrome, we analyzed the results of bacteriological examinations, including antimicrobial susceptibility patterns, of samples taken from patients with crush syndrome admitted to West China Hospital, Sichuan University, after the Wenchuan earthquake. A total of 210 non-replicate clinical isolates were recovered from 42 of the 66 earthquake victims with crush syndrome. Their mean age was 26.9 ± 15.7 y and 40 of them were male. The length of hospital stay was 14.0 days. Wound, blood, sputa, urine and catheter sample specimens were examined. Gram-negative bacilli, Gram-positive bacteria and fungi accounted for 72.4%, 20.0% and 7.6% of the isolates, respectively. Acinetobacter baumannii and Pseudomonas aeruginosa were the major isolates from wounds. Of the isolated strains, 92.8% occurred at >48 h following admission to the hospital, and most of these agents were common isolates in our hospital. Furthermore, 40.9% of these patients were carriers of multidrug-resistant (MDR) microorganisms. Therefore, we can conclude that patients with crush syndrome may have an increased risk of hospital-acquired infection (HAI), suggesting that it is important to select effective antibiotics to control HAI in a timely manner according to the microbiological data.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Zong Zhiyong, a physician in the Department of Infectious Diseases, for his instructive advice and helpful suggestions regarding this manuscript. We thank Ying Binwu for assistance with language editing.

Declaration of interest: None declared.