Aerobic bacterial isolates from infected wounds

Abstract

Background: Wound infection causes great distress in terms of associated mortality and morbidity, increased length of hospital stay, profound discomfort and significant increased in healthcare cost. Infection in a wound delays healing and may cause wound break down, herniation of the wound and complete wound dehiscence.Therefore the knowledge of the causative agents of wound infection will be helpful in the control of wound infection and selection of empiric antimicrobial therapy as an
infection control measure.

Methods:A total of 207 wound specimens collected from patients attending the University of Benin Teaching Hospital were used for this study. All specimens were collected using sterile swabs sticks. Specimens were processed using standard microbiological methods.

Results:A total of 278 bacterial isolates were obtained from 207 wound specimens processed in this study. Positive growth were observed in 185 (89.4%) of the wound cultures and no bacterial isolates were obtained in 22 (21.1%) of the cultured materials. Staphylococcus aureus (26.9%) was the most predominant isolate followed by Klebsiellapneumoniae (17.6%), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (16.9%) and Escherichia coli (12.6%). All isolates were resistant to ampicillin, amoxyillin-clavulanate and tetracycline but show variable susceptibility to other antibacterial used. Majority of the
isolates produced beta lactamase.

Conclusion: A high proportion of the wounds were infected.The variety of microorganisms observed in this study support the need to obtain culture specimen from infected wounds for microbiological evaluation and antibiotic susceptibility determination, so that adapted chemotherapy can be prescribed.

Key words:wound infection, polymicrobial, immune status, host