Pridominant isolates of urinary tract pathogens and their antimicrobial susceptiblity patterns in Gondar University Teaching Hospital, nothwest Ethiopia.

BACKGROUND

Urinary tract infection (UTI) is one of the most common bacterial infections encountered by clinicians in developing countries. Although UTI seldom leads to complications, it can cause significant morbidity and mortality.

OBJECTIVE

To identify the etiologic agents of UTIs and to assess their antimicrobial susceptibility pattern.

METHODS

A retrospective analysis of 1420 mid-stream urine specimens processed fobr culture and antimicrobial susceptibility testing in the bacteriology laboratory of Gondar University Teaching Hospital between September 2002 and August 2003 was conducted

RESULTS

Significant bacteriuria (cultures with > 10(5) colony forming units of bacteria per ml of urine) was observed in 399 (28.1%) of the specimens. Two bacteria each were isolated from 14 specimens, making the number of bacteria isolated to be 413 with the isolation rate of 29.1%. The most commonly isolated bacteria were Escherichia coli 166 (40.2%), Staphylococcus aureus 60 (14.5%), Klebisella species 42 (10.2%) and Citrobacter species 34 (8.2%). Among Gram-positive organisms S. aureus showed high level qf drug resistance for tetracycline 48 (80%), corimoxazole 32 (53.3%), chloramphenicol 32 (53.3%), amnpicillin 26 (43.3%) and penicillin 22 (36.7%). Of the Gram-negative bacteria, extremely high resistance patterns were found in Salmonella species for ampicillin 5 (100%), erythromycin 5 (100%), penicillin 5 (100%), co-trimoxazole 3 (60%), tetracycline 3 (60%) and 3 chloramphenicol (60%). Multiple drug resistance was observed in 85.7% of the isolates. Only 5.1% of the isolates were found to be sensitive to all antibiotics tested.

CONCLUSION

Resistance to the commonly used antibiotics was found to be very high among the isolates leaving clinicians with very few choices of drugs or the treatment of UTIs. It is therefore, critical that the use of antimicrobial agents with in a hospital and all other responsible institutions he reviewed