Abstract

Acquired nosocomial infections include all clinical infections that the patient does not have at the time of admission to the hospital and hours after admission, the patient's natural flora acquires characteristics that become the source of bacterial infections for the patient himself. Nosocomial infections dramatically cause illness and death and impose high costs on the hospitalized patient. Hence, this study tends to compare the prevalence of nosocomial infections in opium consumers and healthy patients admitted to intensive care units in Bahonar hospital of Kerman in 2018. This cohort study was performed on two groups of 100 patients including one group of opioid addicts and one group of non-addicts hospitalized in intensive care units of Bahonar hospital in Kerman. The two groups were compared in terms of nosocomial infections, site of infection, and type of infectious agent, while in intensive care units. In this study, 197 patients were studied, of whom 161 (81.7) were male and 36 (18.3) were female; 98 ( 49.75) had a history of opioid addiction, while 99 (50.25) of them had no drug use. Of 197 patients studied, 118 (59.9) had no infection while 79 (40.1) had nosocomial infections. Of 98 addicted patients, 41 (41.8) were uninfected and 57 (58.2) were infected. Out of 99 non-addict patients, 77 (77.8) were uninfected and 22 (22.2) were infected. Fisher exact test showed that incidence of infection was significantly higher in addicted patients (p-value = 0.001) but there was no significant difference between the two groups in type of infection agent (p-value = 0.547). The results of our study showed that prevalence of nosocomial infections in opium addict patients was significantly higher than non-addict patients, with the highest frequency being pneumonia, UTI, wound infection and sepsis, respectively.