Bacteriology of Early Onset Neonatal Septicaemia in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Neonatal sepsis is the commonest causes of neonatal mortality in the developing world. Aims& Objective To determine the bacteriological profile of neonatal septicaemia, their antibacterial susceptibility pattern. MATERIALS& METHODSA total of 486 neonates (less than 1week of age) suspected septicemia admitted in NICU enrolled over a period of 10 months.1-2 ml of blood collected in aseptic conditions inoculated immediately into 5 ml of brain heart infusion broth with 0.025 % Sodium polyanethol sulfonate as anticoagulant. The broths were subcultured after overnight incubation on chocolate agar, MacConkey agar and 5 %sheep blood agar. organisms isolated kept for biochemical tests for confirmation then checked for Antibiotic sensitivity by Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion method. ResultsOut of 486 cases studied, growth of bacteria was obtained in 44.03 % blood samples. The most frequent offender was Klebsiella spp 25.7 %. followed by E. coli 22.4 % Enterobacter spp.18.6 %, CONS 14.9 %, S. aureus 11.2 % and other less frequent isolates. Study of maternal risk factors revealed 30.8 % of mothers had preterm labor, 22.4 % had PROM and 1.4 % had intra partum fever. The most frequent neonatal risk factor was low birth weight affecting 64 % of the neonates The antimicrobial susceptibility testing revealed that resistance to penicillin was frequent in S. aureus 95.8 % and CONS 87.5 % than in Enterococcus spp 33.3 %. Resistance to amikacin was relatively uncommon in the former two isolates. None of the gram positive isolates were resistant to the glycopeptides - vancomycin and teicoplanin. Most of the gram negative isolates of Enterobacteriaceae family were resistant to ampicillin and amoxycillin