Abstract

Background: Urinary tract infection is one of the most common bacterial infections seen in clinical practice particularly in developing countries. The causative agents for Urinary tract infection vary from place to place and they also vary in their susceptibility and resistance patterns.

Objective: Studies to know the most common causative agents and their susceptibility pattern will help the clinicians to choose the antibiotic for empirical treatment. This study was done to find out the common bacteria causing UTI and to determine the antibiotic susceptibility pattern of the urinary pathogens from a tertiary care hospital in South India.

Materials and Methods: A total of 573 mid-stream urine samples from the suspected UTI patients were tested microbiologically and antimicrobial susceptibility test were performed for the isolated pathogens using Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion method.

Results: The rate of culture positivity in females was 87.82% and in males was 27.92%. E-coli was the most frequently isolated urinary pathogen (37.95%), followed by Klebsiella(21.41%) and Acinetobacter(10.94%). E-coli was highly sensitive to Nitrofurantoin(81.92%) and Amikacin(69.88%) and it was highly resistant to Ampicillin(1.0%). Klebsiella was highly sensitive to Impinem and it was highly resistant to Ampicillin.

Conclusion: Higher prevalence of UTI was seen in females. Gram negative organisms were the most commonly isolated organisms in UTI. Urinary pathogens showed resistance to commonly used antibiotics like Ampicillin, Norfloxacin and Nalidixic acid. The susceptibility and resistance patterns of urinary pathogens should be considered before starting empirical treatment for UTI.

Key words: Urinary Tract Infection; Antimicrobial Susceptibility; Urinary Pathogens