Prevalence and antibiotic utilization pattern of uropathogens causing community-acquired urinary tract infection in Kerala, India.

Background: A prospective observational study was carried out over a period of 6 months among the inpatients and outpatients in the departments of general medicine, urology, obstetrics, and gynecology of a tertiary level referral hospital in south Malabar region of Kerala to assess the prevalence of various bacterial isolates and their changing susceptibility to antimicrobial agents and to evaluate the pattern of antibiotic utilization in urinary tract infection (UTI). Methods: A total of 680 samples were analyzed from December 2015 to May 2016; among them, only 74 patients met the inclusion criteria. Of the 74 patients, 53 were female and 21 were male. Female patients were found to be significantly higher in number in the age group of 61–70years. The maximum number of UTI cases was reported from the general medicine department. Results: The disease was more significantly portrayed in suburbans (47%) and rural (38%) population compared with urbans (15%). Fever (60.81%) and dysuria (48.64%) were the most common symptoms. Diabetes (34%) was found to be the major predisposing factor followed by postmenopausal factors (24%), previous UTI (14%), renal disease (9%), benign prostatic hypertrophy (8%), smoking (7%), and oral contraceptives (4%). Escherichia coli was the major isolate (n=36) followed by Klebsiella (n=13), Citrobacter (n=8), Enterococcus (n=7), Enterobacter (n=4), Pseudomonas (n=3), coagulase-negative Staphylococcus (n=2), and Proteus (n=1). Majority of patients were prescribed with cefoperazone+sulbactum (n=28) followed by levofloxacin (n=25) and nitrofurantoin (n=10). Cumulative antibiogram was prepared as the final step of the study using the WHONET 5.6 software. Gram-negative organisms such as E. coli, Klebsiella, and Citrobacter showed higher susceptibility toward piperacillin-tazobactum, cefoperazone-sulbactam, imipenem, meropenem, amikacin, and netilmicin. Gram-positive organisms such as Enterococcus showed higher susceptibility toward piperacillin-tazobactum, cefoperazone-sulbactam, amoxicillin-clavulanic acid, vancomycin, and linezolid. Conclusions: In our setting, routine culture may be necessary as treatment failure with empirical therapy is likely to occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]