Abstract

Surgical site infections account for high mortality, morbidity, and elevated costs of treatment for surgical patients. The study sought to determine the prevalence and antibiotic susceptibility patterns of bacterial isolates from postoperative wound infections among patients attending Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital. A cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out between October 2018 and March 2019. It included patients of all age groups with surgical site infections following general, obstetrics, and gynecological surgeries. Pus swabs were obtained aseptically from 58 consented patients with clinical evidence of surgical site infections. Gram stain, culture, biochemical tests, and antibiotic susceptibility tests were done for each pus swab. The preponderant isolate was Staphylococcus aureus (28.2%) followed by Escherichia coli (15.4%). Whereas Methicillin-resistant S. aureus accounted for 65.4% (n=17) of the total Staphylococcus species. Chloramphenicol was the most sensitive drug to all the bacteria isolates. Ampicillin and amoxycillin recorded resistance rates >90% against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. The majority of the gram-negative rods were highly resistant. Hence, this calls for continuous monitoring of the susceptibility patterns to determine the profile of surgical site infections bacteria isolates found in the hospitals.

Key words: Surgical site infection, antibiotic susceptibility, bacteria prevalence, Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital.