Neonatal Urinary Tract Infection: Clinical Response to Empirical Therapy versus In vitro Susceptibility at Bahrami Children’s Hospital- Neonatal Ward: 2001-2010

Abstract

Urinary tract infection (UTI) is a neonatal life threatening infection which is usually treated with ampicillin plus an aminoglycoside or a third-generation cephalosporin. Recently, growing number of Escherchia coli species resistant to ampicillin and aminoglycosides have raised concerns regarding the necessity to change the empirical therapy. This motivates us to determine neonatal UTI clinical response to the used empirical antibiotics. This study was designed as a Case Series. All neonates admitted to Bahrami Children Hospital, Tehran, Iran, during 2001- 2010 with a diagnosis of UTI surveyed by simple non-random sampling. Totally, 97 cases (including 83 (85.6%) term, 8 (8.2%) post-term and 6 (6.2%) preterm neonates) with a mean age of 15.85 ± 7.05 days at admission ,average weight of 3195.57 ± 553g at birth and 3276.29 ± 599.182 g at admission were studied. Ampicillin resistance in 93 cases (95.9%), gentamicin resistance in 51 cases (52.6%) and trimethoprim- sulfamethoxazole resistance in 44 cases (45.4%) were the leading resistances in this study. Escherichia coli was the dominant organism in 76.3% (74 patients) of study population which was resistant to ampicillin in 95.9% (71 cases). Despite the observed resistant to initial empirical regimen antibiotics (especially ampicillin), 81.4% of patients responded to empirical therapy. However, we believe till conductance of more detailed studies regarding the relationship between empirical therapy and antibiogram concordance, physicians take ampicillin-resistant E coli infection issue into accounts from the first steps of management of critically ill neonates.