Abstract:
Objective: Urinary tract infection is a common pediatric problem with the potential to produce long-term
morbidity. Therefore, appropriate diagnosis and prompt treatment is required. However, studies about magnitude of uropathogenicity and antimicrobial resistance pattern of pediatric urinary tract infection (UTI)
are lacking in resource limited countries including Ethiopia. This study was aimed to determine bacterial
isolates, antimicrobial susceptibility pattern among pediatric patients with UTI.
Material and methods: A cross- sectional study was conducted. Pathogenic bacterial isolates were identified by culture and biochemical methods following standard procedures. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing of the isolates for commonly used antibiotics was done using the standard disc diffusion method on
Muller Hinton agar. Associations between dependent and independent variables were measured using chisquare test and within 95% confidence interval. P values <0.05 were considered as statistically significant.
Results: A total of 310 pediatric patients were included in the study, and 82 (26.45%) bacterial isolates were
detected. Gram- negative bacteria were predominant etiologic agents of UTI in this study. E. coli was the
most frequently occurring pathogen (n=45; 54.88%) followed by S. aureus and P.aeruginosa (n=8; 9.75% for
both), P. vulgaris, P.aeruginosa (n=4; 4.88%, for both) and Enterococcus species (n=3; 3.66%). All K. pneumoniae, P. mirabilis, and K. ozanae straines were 100% resistance to ampicillin, followed by P. aeruginosa
(87.5%) and E. coli (69%). While all Gram- positive bacterial isolates were 100% sensitive to ciprofloxacin.
Malnutrition, history of catherization and previous history of UTI were independently associated with UTI
(p=0.000).
Conclusion: There was a high prevalence of uropathogenic bacteria and drug resistance particularly to ampicillin (72%) and tetracycline (37.80%). This condition indicates that antibiotic selection should be based
on knowledge of the local prevalence of bacterial organisms and antibiotic sensitivities rather than empirical
treatment.
Keywords: Pediatric; symptomatic; urinary tract infectio
