Abstract:
Background: Hospital treatment guidelines are often guided by scientific evidence of
efficacy of the anti-microbial agents. In developing countries, most of the treatment
guidelines are adopted from the World Health Organisation (WHO). However, local
data is often needed to confirm or adjust these guidelines to suit a local situation. In
resource limited settings there is scarce data on blood culture isolates and their anti-
microbial sensitivity patterns to guide anti-biotic prescription in these settings.
Objectives: To assess the bloodstream bacterial isolates and their anti-biotic sensitivity
patterns in patients admitted at a tertiary teaching and referral hospital.
Design: Hospital based laboratory retrospective study
Setting: Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH), Eldoret, Kenya.
Subjects: All blood culture specimens received from inpatients at MTRH over a 12
year period from 2002 to 2013.
Results: The median age was 13.4yrs (IQR 0.7-29).Most of the blood samples were from
female patients (51.8%). A total of 4046 blood culture samples were analysed of which
29.9% (n=1356) yielded positive growths. Majority of the positive blood cultures were
from the New Born Unit (62.4%). Staph epidermidis was the most common organism
isolated (43.1% n=531) followed by Klebsiella pneumoniae (22.8% n=281). Resistance to
commonly used anti-biotics (penicillin, cephalosporin) was high among gram positive
as well as gram negative organisms. No trend in bacterial isolates was observed over
the study period.
Conclusions: Staph epidermidis and Klebsiella pneumoniae were the most common
organisms isolated with higher growth rates occurring in the neonatal and paediatric
age groups than in adults. There was no trend in bacterial isolates over the study
period. Resistance to commonly used anti-biotics was prevalent.
