Intensive care unit environment contamination with fungi.

PURPOSE: The purpose of the study was evaluation of the fungal presence in the environment of an intensive care unit.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: The environment testing was carried out at a chest clinic intensive care unit in Cracow, in December 2004. The materials to mycological examinations were sampled simultaneously from indoor air and room walls in 15 rooms: air samples twice daily while samples from the walls once daily, for five days. The findings were processed statistically. The t-test (Student) and F-test (Snedecor) were used. The border value of significance was 0.05.

RESULTS: No fungi were found in 6 air samples out of 150 taken in 15 rooms. The mean number of fungi in the particular rooms in the whole sampling period varied from 172 to 12 c.f.u. x m(-3). Out of 75 samples from the walls, fungi were present only in 19 of them. The mean numbers varied from 0 to 0.37 c.f.u. x cm(-2). The moulds Aspergillus sp., Penicillium sp. and Cladosporium sp. as well as yeast-like fungi Rhodotorula rubra, Candida sp. were most frequently isolated from the indoor air and the walls.

CONCLUSION: Significant difference between the numbers of fungi sampled in the morning vs in the evening occurred on the first, third and fourth days of sampling (p < 0.001). Yeast-like fungi Rhodotorula rubra and moulds Aspergillus sp., Cladosporium sp., Penicillium sp. were isolated from indoor air in all of the rooms tested.