Introduction: Imipenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa (IRPA), due to resistance to different classes of antibiotics and its remarkable capacity to survive in harsh and adverse conditions such as those in the hospital environment, is considered a serious threat to the healthcare system. Given the great impact of IRPA on patients' outcome and in order to possibly improve antibiotic prescription, this study was conducted to determine the prevalence of clinical isolates of IRPA in different parts of Iran.
Methods: A systematic literature search was performed in PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar and Scopus, as well as in two Iranian domestic search engines, i.e., Iranian Scientific Information Database and Magiran. Finally, after applying exclusion and inclusion criteria 37 articles with full-texts describing the prevalence of imipenem-resistant P. aeruginosa were selected for meta-analysis and systematic review.
Results: The pooled estimation of 5227 P. aeruginosa isolates in this analysis showed that the percentage of imipenem-resistant P. aeruginosa is about 54% in the Iranian population (95%CI: 0.47-0.62, logit event rate=0.19, 95%CI: -0.12,0.49).
Conclusion: The findings of this analysis show that in the majority of Iranian hospitals the relative frequency of IRPA is high, therefore, in order to prevent further dissemination of IRPA, more appropriate antibiotic prescription and infection control policies must be implemented by decision-makers.
Keywords: Imipenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa; Pseudomonas aeruginosa; carbapenem resistance; multidrug resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa.