Abstract

Muktikesh Dash1*, Pooja Misra2 , Siddhartha Routaray3

Approximately 73 percent of all post-burn deaths are directly or indirectly related to septic processes. The objective of this retrospective study at a tertiary care hospital, Odisha, India was to isolate aerobic bacterial pathogens and study its antimicrobial resistant pattern in order to establish empiric antimicrobial strategies for the early treatment of imminent septic events. During three year period (January 2010 to December 2012), 193 burn wound swabs were collected from 187 hospitalized patients. Isolation and identification of microorganisms was done using standard procedure and each isolate’s antimicrobial resistant pattern was determined by Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion technique. From 193 swabs, 171 (88.6%) culture positive swabs and 176 isolates were obtained. The most common isolate was Pseudomonas aeruginosa (49.4%), followed by Staphylococcus aureus (22.2%), Klebsiella pneumoniae (13.1%) and Acinetobacter baumannii (4.5%). P. aeruginosa was least resistant to piperacillin/tazobactam (12.6%) and imipenem (9.2%) and 59 percent methicillin resistant S. aureus (MRSA) was 100% sensitive to vancomycin and linezolid. High prevalence of multidrug resistant bacteria in our hospital setting suggest continuous surveillance of burn wound infections and need for development of strict infection control practices.