Recent trend of multi-drug resistance in pseudomonas aeruginosa

Objective: ontinues emergence of resistance among Pseudomonas(P.) aeruginosa strains to common antimicrobial drugs have been documented world-wide. This study investigated the recent trend of antimicrobial resistance patterns of P.aeruginosa among the patients in mid & far western region of Nepal. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted on 917 patients with suspected P.aeruginosa infections, attending outpatient and inpatient departments of Nepalgunj Medical College and teaching Hospital, Banke, Nepal from September 2011 to January 2014. Specimens were collected from Pus/wound, sputum, urine, tracheal aspirates, central venous catheter tip, broncho-alveolar lavage fluid, catheters and vaginal swabs and processed for isolation and identification of P.aeruginosa following the standard microbiolog- ical methods. While the disc diffusion test was used to determined antimicrobial resistance pat- terns of the recovered isolates at the central Laboratory of Microbiology. Results: One hundred ninety four isolates were identified as P.aeruginosa. Resistance to chloramphenicol (74.23%), ceftriaxone (69.56%), Cefepime (57.22%), Cefoperazone-Salbactum (54.12%) and co-trimox- azole (53.02%) was observed. All the isolates were susceptible to imipenem. 48(24.74%) of P.aeruginosa isolates were multi-drug resistant to>3 classes of antibiotics. Among 194 isolates, 88(45.36%) were from the patients of 21-40 years age group and this group was statistically significant (P<0.05), compared to the other age groups. Conclusions: The study revealed the occurrence of drug resistant strains of P.aeruginosa in Nepal. Many isolates showed high lev- els of antibiotic resistance might be due to antibiotic abuse. It is therefore recommended judicious use of antibiotics by the physicians to curb the increasing multi drug resistant of P.aerug- inosa strains in Nepal.