Prevalence of Bacterial Species in Traumatic, Burns and Post-Surgical Wounds: Focus on Emerging Drug Resistance

Introduction: Resistance of bacteria to antibiotics poses a serious challenge in managing and treating wound-related complications. Determining the antibiotic resistance patterns is crucial for guiding appropriate antibiotic therapy to avoid their overuse and emergence of deadly superbugs.

Aim: The study was aimed to isolate and detect bacterial species responsible for causing infection in different types of traumatic, burns and post-surgical wounds and antibiotic resistance profile of isolated microorganisms.

Methodology: The bacterial load and isolation of microbes was determined by plating of samples onto duplicate blood and MacConkey agar plates. The morphologically distinct bacterial isolates were identified by biochemical tests and susceptibility of bacteria against selected antibiotics was determined by Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion method.

Results: The major bacterial strains isolated were Staphylococcus aureus, E. coli, Klebsiella sp. and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The most prominent bacterial strain found was Staphylococcus aureus, present in more than 54% of collected samples, followed by E. coli, Klebsiella sp., and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, present in 17%, 11%, and 10% of collected samples, respectively. The study further explored that Pseudomonas spp. and Acinetobacter spp. showed resistance against various non-identical antibiotics such as Amikacin (aminoglycosides), Azithromycin (macrolides), Levofloxacin & ciprofloxacin (fluoroquinolones) and Cefazolin (cephalosporins). However, Doxycycline (tetracycline) was the only antibiotic that inhibited the growth of all the bacterial species isolated from the infected wounds. levofloxacin was also one of the effective antibiotics in restricting the growth of Staphylococcus aureus, E. coli and Klebsiella spp.

Consequently, the study suggests that Doxycycline followed by levofloxacin may be the most suitable antibiotics for controlling wound infection in this specific geographic region.