DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2019.v07i12.014

Pages: 3891-3896

P. aeruginosa, particularly drug resistant phenotypes present a serious therapeutic challenge for treatment due to its intrinsic ability to resist many classes of antibiotics as well as its ability to acquire resistance. Considering the paucity of data on the prevalence of drug resistant P.aeruginosa isolates in West Bengal, the present study has been envisaged to assess its prevalence among hospitalized patients. This study was conducted to detect multidrug resistant (MDR) and extremely drug resistant (XDR) Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates among patients in a tertiary care hospital in West Bengal. Pseudomonas aeruginosa was identified using standard methods from various clinical samples collected over a period seven months. Their antimicrobial susceptibility to 11 antimicrobial agents from 7 antimicrobial categories were determined by disk diffusion method and characterization of P. aeruginosa isolates as MDR and XDR was done according to standardized international terminology. MDR was defined as acquired non-susceptibility to at least one agent in ≥3 antimicrobial categories and XDR was defined as non-susceptibility to at least one agent in ≥6 antimicrobial categories. Out of total 91 Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates, 25 (27.47%) of them were multidrug resistant and 1 (0.01%) was found to be extremely drug resistant. Most of them were located at ICU. Overall, the highest susceptibility was shown to polymyxins categories i.e. polymyxin B (96.8%) and colistin (91.7%) and the lowest to ceftazidime (21.2%) and gentamicin (49%). The high frequency of antimicrobial resistance in clinical isolates of P. aeruginosa is posing threat in health-care institutions. To minimize the emergence and spread of this organism, a regular surveillance of healthcare-associated infections with proper implementation of antimicrobial policy and infection control measures are need of the hour.