gms | German Medical Science

Introduction: Water quality in hospitals is a critical element and a potential source for healthcare-associated infections with waterborne organisms. In order to know the magnitude of the problem, we investigated the water supplies in 4 Hospital from “Antineoplastic Drugs Children National Program” (PINDA) in Santiago, Chile.

Material and methods: Water samples were obtained during the fall & winter season (April and July 2013) and spring & summer season (November 2013 and January 2014). Bacteriological, fungal and parasitological searches were considered for any sample. If at least one colony forming unit was observed was defined as a positive sample. The microbiological analysis was done at the Microbiology and Mycology Program of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Chile. The statistical analysis considered non-parametric test, where the response variable were microbiological load by each hospital.

Results: A total of 205 water samples were tested. We found presence of microorganisms in the 90.3% of the samples tested. Microsporidia spp. was the most frequent in 37% of samples. In decreasing order, we found the following bacterial organisms: Pseudomonas fluorescence, Enterobacter cloacae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Alcaligenes faecalis, Pseudomonas putida, Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, Pseudomonas oleovorans, Pseudomonas stutzeri, Legionella neumofila, and a not identified not fermenter gram negative bacilli, parasitic and fungus (Rhodotorula spp, Penicilium spp, Acremoniun, Fusarium and Rizophus). Although, quantitative analyzes showed there were events with presence of microorganisms, they were not consistent enough in the samples to detect statistical differences (P>0.05) among these 4 hospitals.

Conclusions: We demonstrated a high frequency of water contamination among the 4 Hospital included, that could be a source of health care associated infections. It is necessary to correlate the finding with clinical episodes of infection. It is important to define the cut-off level to define water contamination, in special, in oncological and transplantation center where more vulnerable patients are hospitalized.