Microbiological profile of bacteria present on mobile phones of health care personel that cause nosocomial infections

• Author Details:   
• V Nagamadhavi
• Tejaswini Tejaswini
• P Subbulu ^*

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Introduction: Smart phones have become omnipresent in Clinical and Non clinical environment. They have been implicated as a source of bacterial contamination. Drug resistant pathogens such as methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Gram negative bacteria.
Aims and Objectives: To evaluate the role of mobile phones in relation to transmission of bacteria from mobile phone to health care workers and their pathogenicity.
Inclusion Criteria: Medical faculty present on the days of data collection.
Exclusion Criteria: Who ever don’t give consent.
Materials and Methods: In total, 200 mobile phones were sampled. Two senior medical students were trained by a senior microbiologist to obtain the swabs in a standardized manner. The sides, screen and back of mobile phones were swabbed using a sterile cotton swab. The swabs were taken to the laboratory without delay and are incubated in brain heart infusion broth and incubated at 37 degrees for 24-48 hrs. Positive samples were further sub cultured on different growth media; mannitolsaltagar to isolate Staphylococci, MacConkey-agar to isolate Gram negative bacteria and Entero coccosel-agar to isolate fecal Enterococci.
Results: Out of 200 cell phones sampled, 66 were found contaminated with varied number of bacteria. The most commonly isolated organism was aerobic spore bacilli 33(16.5%) followed by Pseudomonas 13(6.5%), Proteus 11(5.5%), Escherichia coli 7(3.5%), Klebsiella 1(0.5%), Staphylococcus aureus 1(0.5%).

Keywords: Nosocomial infections, Drug resistance, Sterile swab, MRSA, Antibiotic susceptibility testing.