Microbial Environmental Pollution in ICUs. Results, Trends, and Suggestions from a Long-Lasting Surveillance

Intensive care units (ICUs) are special areas in hospitals for patients with severe and life- threatening diseases. ICUs are of several categories, such as neonatal ICUs, cardiac ICUs, neurological ICUs, surgical ICUs, etc. The ICUs’ patients may show a high susceptibility for hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) depending on underlying disease, duration of stay and treatment. ICUs are considered potential reservoirs for (opportunistic) pathogenic microbial strains and the risk of acquiring infection in these hospital environments is higher than in others. Several studies show the role of inanimate surface and equipment contamination in the transmission of pathogens to ICU patients. The aim of this study is to describe the results of 124 sampling campaigns performed during 12 years of microbiological surveillance of five ICUs of different categories, for an overall number of 714 samples (232 from air and 482 from surface), to analyze their trends and to elaborate suggestions to improve ICUs’ environmental quality and patients’ safety.