Bacteriological Profile and Resistance Pattern of Blood Culture Isolates in a Tertiary Hospital in Port-Harcourt, Nigeria

Blood stream infections can result in life threatening conditions with high morbidity and mortality. Hence, prompt diagnosis and antimicrobial treatment is required. The gold standard of making a diagnosis of septicaemia is the isolation of the offending pathogen from a blood culture. A knowledge of the bacteriological profile and susceptibility patterns of organisms isolated from blood culture will help guide the choice of empirical antibiotic administration in that institution.

This study reports the bacterial profile of blood stream infections and their antibiotic susceptibility patterns. Bacterial strains isolated from 623 blood cultures from various wards of the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Nigeria, over a period of 24 months were retrospectively analyzed for frequency of isolation, susceptibility profile, age and gender distributions.

Overall prevalence yield from blood culture was 22.5% and gram negative bacilli accounted for 81.6% of the total yield with K. pneumoniae being the most frequently isolated organism. K pneumoniae was mostly resistant to gentamicin and ceftriaxone (95.8%) while S. aureus showed the highest resistance to cefuroxime (91.7%) followed by ceftazidime (87.5%). Majority of the samples and isolates were from neonates representing 49.1% and 75.89% respectively and this was statistically significant P<0.05 while ages between 1-18 months and adult accounted for 18.44% and 5.67% of the total isolates respectively.

The exhibition of multidrug resistance to the commonly used antibiotics buttresses the need for a review of the empirical antibiotic regimen used in sepsis. It also emphasizes the importance of the use of more sensitive and rapid methods of bacterial detection from blood culture.