?Bacteriological Analysis of Ophthalmic Operation Theatre

Editor Hospital acquired infection is an additional affliction to the patient admitted to the hospital and is caused by pathogens prevalent in hospital environment. Microbes are ubiquitous in the hospital environment and can reach the sick patient through air, water, food, contaminated equipments, catheters, scopes, ventilators, contaminated disinfectants, linen and other preparations used for treatment, visitors, infected patients, etc. Microbes prevalent in hospital environment select the patient with lowered resistance and produce infections which are difficult to treat. The active involvement and co-operation of the Microbiology Laboratory is important in the nosocomial infection control programme, particularly in surveillance and the use of laboratory services for epidemiological purposes. Surveillance is used to identify possible infection problems, monitor infection trends and assess the quality of care in the hospital1. Regular practice of environmental survey and suitable control measures reduce the rate of hospital-acquired infections considerably. Also, the current knowledge about environmental sources/ reservoir of infections gives an early indication of an epidemic / outbreak. Air and the environment of the operation theatre including instruments, equipments, disinfectants and other articles coming in direct contact of the wound or other vulnerable sites of the patient are the important exogenous sources of infection in the operation theatre. In view of this a bacteriological survey of ophthalmic operation theatre was carried out to find out the extent of bacterial contamination of various sites. For this purpose, a total of 28 specimens from various sources such as eye drops (08), sink (06), dettol (04), savlon (04), air (03), cheatle forcep fluids (02) and irrigation saline (01) from ophthalmic operation theatre were processed for isolation and identification of bacteria by routine bacteriological techniques. Out of 28 specimens processed, only 03 specimens (1.71%) were found positive yielding isolation of Klebsiella spp. (one), Citrobacter spp. (one) and Bacillus subtilis (one). All the three specimens/ swabs were from sinks in ophthalmic operation theatre. These results indicate that the prevalence of microbes in ophthalmic operation theatre was comparatively very less and suggest that ophthalmic operation theatre was bacteriologically safe during the period of surveillance. This may be attributed to nonexposure/less exposure to blood, mucus and other infectious clinical material in ophthalmic operation theatre. Maintainance of such type of bacteriologically safe environment is recommended, especially in ophthalmic operation theatres.