Abstract

Staphylococcus aureus continues to offer challenges to medical science in the area of resistance to chemotherapeutic agents leading to treatment failures using common antibiotics. In this study, S. aureus isolated from patients from three hospitals in Kumasi, Ghana were tested for their sensitivity to some reference antibiotics using the Kirby-Bauer agar disc diffusion method. A total of 109 S. aureusisolates were obtained from wound and nose swabs of 300 patients. S. aureus was isolated from 44% female and 56.0% male patients. Majority of the S. aureus isolates were identified in patients aged between 20 and 29 years, while those within the age group of 60 to 69 years recorded the least number of S. aureus isolates. Vancomycin had the highest susceptibility of 74.1% followed by ceftriaxone with 67.6%, erythromycin with 49.0%, ampicillin with 47.0% and gentamicin with 44.4%. Out of the 109 S. aureus isolated from the three hospitals, 32.1% exhibited multiple drug resistance.

Key words: Antibiotics, bacterial resistance, Staphylococcus aureus, sensitivity.