Infections are one of the major threats for inpatients, even more for patients hospitalized in intensive care units (ICUs). They are responsible for an important increase of morbidity and mortality rates as well as a burst of medical costs since approximatively 50% of ICU patients acquire an infection during their hospitalization and 60% of attributable deaths (Vincent et al. 2009). In ICUs, patients are commonly colonized or infected by a small contingent of multidrug-resistant (MDR) isolates gathered under the acronym "ESKAPE bugs" for Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacter spp. (Pendleton et al. 2013; Rice 2010; Reardon 2014). Moreover, it is clearly established now, that epidemiological characterization in K. pneumoniae and E. cloacae isolates seemed to be an major step due to the existence of potential hyper-virulent and/or multidrug resistant strains (Lam et al. 2018; Moradigaravand et al. 2016).
The aim of this study is the investigation of the overtime clonal diversity evolution of Klebsiella pneumoniae (Kpn) and Enterobacter cloacae complex (ECC) strains in long-term hospitalized patients (more than 28 days of hospitalization). To assess that objective, we will undertake a longitudinal monocentric, prospective study, based on weekly stool's samples done in ICUs patients and sent to our laboratory for MDR bacteria screening during their stay in reanimation wards and also, if possible, in their downstream wards especially in neurosurgery.