| ORIGINAL ARTICLE |
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| Year : 2017 | Volume
: 13
| Issue : 3 | Page : 156-161 |
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Current Scenario of Geriatric Fungal Infections: A Prevalence Study from a Tertiary Care Hospital
Bineeta Kashyap1, Shukla Das2, Tanu Sagar3, Kavita Gupta4
1 Associate Professor, Department of Microbiology, UCMS & GTB Hospital, New Delhi, India
2 Director Professor, Department of Microbiology, UCMS & GTB Hospital, New Delhi, India
3 Ex-Senior Resident, Department of Microbiology, UCMS & GTB Hospital, New Delhi, India
4 Senior Resident, Department of Microbiology, UCMS & GTB Hospital, New Delhi, India
Correspondence Address:
Bineeta Kashyap
C-402, Vimal CGHS Ltd., Plot 3, Sector 12, Dwarka, New Delhi-78
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None
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Aims and Objectives: Elderly persons are highly susceptible to infectious agents and they acquire infectious diseases easily, compared with the general population. Normal physiological changes of aging, coexistence of chronic diseases, alteration of host defense mechanisms and environmental exposure are the major factors associated with increased frequency and poorer prognosis of infectious diseases in these patients. The study was undertaken to assess the prevalence and the current status of fungal infections in the geriatric population from a tertiary care hospital located in East Delhi.
Materials and Methods: A retrospective study was conducted over a period of one year among geriatric patients presenting with clinically suspected fungal infections from various clinical departments in the mycology laboratory. All samples were analysed on direct microscopy by 40% KOH in nails and 10% KOH for other samples and Gram staining for yeast. For fungal culture all samples were inoculated on two isolation media; one sabouraud's dextrose agar (SDA) without antibiotics and the other SDA with chloram-phenicol and cycloheximide.
Results and conclusions: Total of 453 samples received from 420 geriatric patients were analysed. Among the study subjects 66.90% patients belonged to age group 60-65 years, only 2.85% were 81 years onwards and 71.42% were males. The most frequent received sample was nail 57.17%. A total of 197 samples were positive for fungal elements, of which yeast were 44(22.33%) and 153 (77.66%) were hyphae positive on direct examination. Out of total 66 fungal isolates obtained from all samples, 22 isolates (33.33%) were with Trichophyton, 13 isolates with Candida spp. (20/66) 30.30% and 6 isolates with Aspergillus spp. (9.09 %) as the most frequent growth.
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