Arijeet Mukherjee

Hospitals are always acted as a source of infection to patients admitted to them. The terms hospital infection, hospital-acquired infection or nosocomial infection are applied to infections developing in hospitalized patients, not present or in incubation at the time of their admission. Such infection may become evident during their stay in hospital or, sometimes, only after their discharge. Approximately 5-10 % of patients admitted to acute care hospitals in developed countries, and more than 25% of such patients in developing countries, have been found to acquire infections which were not present or incubating at the time of admission. Such hospital-acquired, or nosocomial infections add to the morbidity, mortality, and costs that one might expect from the underlining illness alone. To fight these infections hospital personals employs many techniques and treatments to minimize the risk of certain infections. One of them is the use of antibiotics (like Meropenem) to prevent or control the spreading of such infections. Meropenem is an ultra-broad spectrum injectable antibiotic  used to treat a wide variety of infections. It is a beta lactum and belongs to the subgroup of carbapenem, similar to imipenem and ertapenem. Most hospital acquired pathogens show both sensitive and resistant results for Meropenem. So it is necessary to evaluate the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of Meropenem which would help the doctors to treat the patients infected by hospital acquired pathogens in a distinctive manner. So for the evaluation of MIC of Meropenem we are using the E-Strip Method which is useful for quantitative determination of susceptibility of bacteria to antibacterial agents. The system comprises of a predefined quantitative gradient which is used to determine the Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) in mcg/ml of different antimicrobial agents against microorganisms as tested on appropriate agar media, following overnight incubation. Thus by this experiment we will be able to provide satisfactory data to the hospital personals for the treatment of hospital acquired infections using Meropenem.