Microbiological profile of urinary tract infection in a tertiary care hospital

Background: Urinary tract infections are amongst the most common infections encountered in clinical practice. Area specific monitoring studies aimed to gain knowledge about the type of pathogens responsible for UTIs and their resistance patterns may help the clinician to choose the correct empirical treatment. Objective: We aimed to study the antibiotic resistance pattern of the urinary pathogens isolated from patients in our tertiary care hospital. Methods: This observational study was conducted at N.H.L. Medical College and V.S. Hospital, Ahmedabad Gujarat, India from January to June 2016. The study included all the patients who were admitted or visited the outpatient department in the hospital with symptoms of UTI and had UTI confirmed by positive urine culture reports. Culture and antibiotic susceptibility was carried out as per standard microbiological procedures. Results: Significant bacteriuria was present in 24.26% of the samples, 64.58% were sterile and 11.16% showed insignificant bacteriuria. The most common pathogens isolated were Escherichia coli (61.42%), Klebsiella spp (14.22%) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (8.02%). For enterobacteriaceae isolates the mean resistance was low for cefoperazone sulbactam (34.4%), amikacin (29.4%), nitrofurantoin (27.6%) and carbapenems (30%). Isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter baumannii were highly resistant to multiple antimicrobial agents. Conclusion: A high isolation rate of pathogens from urine samples of clinically suspected UTI shows a good correlation between clinical findings and microbiological methods. The antibiotics commonly used in UTIs are less effective. Regular monitoring is required to establish reliable information about resistance pattern of urinary pathogens for optimal empirical therapy of patients with UTIs.