| 32 |
Oral Abstracts (Session 1 of 5)
|
Moderator: Patricia M. Mertz, BA (Presentation 32.3) Effects of low-frequency ultrasound applied in vitro to highly antibiotic-resistant acinetobacter isolates recovered from soldiers returning from Iraq CPT Tony Pierson, Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, Tex; Jeffrey A. Niezgoda, MD, FACHM, FACEP, The Center for Comprehensive Wound Care and Hyperbaric Medicine, Milwaukee, Wis; 1LT Sarah Learmonth, Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, Tex; CPT Dennis Blunt; LTC Kevin McNabb, Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, Tex Abstract: Brooke Army Medical Center isolated multiple isolates of highly antibiotic-resistant Acinetobacter ssp. (primarily A. baumannii) from wounded soldiers returning from Iraq. Concern about effective treatment of these organisms led our institution to begin investigating low-frequency ultrasound (LFU) as a method of increasing the effectiveness of antibiotics on A. baumannii in wound management. Studies have suggested that LFU (Sonoca UAW, Soring, Inc., USA) applied in conjunction with antibiotics may increase their overall effectiveness. We hypothesize that combining antibiotics with LFU may be an effective method of wound management and that this combination may be synergistic in its overall effect. In this initial work, we wanted to determine if sonification would have an effect on our organism of interest, A. baumannii. We selected several organisms, both gram positive and gram negative, that have been shown to be killed by sonification (E. coli, S. aureus, and S. pyogenes) and added 3 highly resistant A. baumannii isolates. Bacterial death was measured by both colony counts after 24 hours of growth and acridine orange staining using a standard protocol. Colony counts, including A. baumannii, were significantly reduced by sonification. Our data supports the assertion that sonification has an antibacterial effect on some bacteria, including A. baumannii. |
|