Clinicians describe challenge of treating multidrug-resistant war wounds from Ukraine

In a slide presentation at this week’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Copenhagen, Denmark, a team of surgeons and infectious disease clinicians highlighted the complexity and multidrug-resistant, polymicrobial nature of some of the war wounds they are seeing in Ukraine.

The presentation focused on 14 patients with highly complex musculoskeletal infections from gunshot and bomb wounds who were treated at the Center for Musculoskeletal Surgery at the Charite-University Hospital in Berlin from March to December 2022. Of the 14, 13 were colonized with multidrug-resistant gram-negative organisms, including Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Acinetobacter baumannii, and Escherichia coli, as well coagulase-negative staphylococci, enterococci, and fungal organisms.