Introduction:

Stethoscopes has been described as a fomite which is able to transmit infectious agents to health care workers.

Objective:

To describe the presence of microbial contamination in stethoscopes used by health care providers.

Methods:

Cross-sectional study in 50 microbiological samples obtained from stethoscopes belonging to health care providers whom worked in “Cerro” Pediatric Hospital from June to October, 2019. It was applied a survey to evaluate demographic and epidemiologic variables of the owners related with the implementation of disinfection measures. The results were examined through percentage analysis and the Ji-square test to look for significative relation (p≤0,05) with hygene habits.

Results:

100% of the stethoscopes were contamined. The most frequent isolated agents were: Staphylococcus alba 40.3%, Staphylococcus aureus 32.6% and Klebsiella pneumoniae 3.8%. The hospital areas with more contagion were: Miscellany (44.2%) and Respiratory (36.5%). The personnel with more contamination in their equipments were: students (81.4%) and specialists (14.8%). The cause of not doing the disinfection processes in the students was the lack of knowledge (45.4%); and in the specialists was the lack of hygene habits and the lack of disinfectant solutions (66.3%). Negative Gran bacteria were mostly sensitive to aminoglycosides and Staphylococcus aureus to clindamycin, vancomycin, ciprofloxacin and cloramphenicol.

Conclusions:

There is high frequency of contamination in the stethoscopes used by health care providers, mainly motived by the lack of disinfection habits in physicians and lack of knowledge on it in the students.

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