Bacterial Profile and Antimicrobial Susceptibility Patterns of Isolates among Patients Diagnosed with Surgical Site Infection at MCM Comprehensive Specialized Hospital: Cross-sectional Study

Background: Surgical site infection (SSI) is among the most common problems for patients who undergo surgical procedures. It remains a prevalent problem contributing to morbidity and mortality due to the incidence of antimicrobial-resistant bacterial pathogens. Objective: To determine the pattern of drug susceptibility and bacterial pathogens isolated from SSI at Myungsung Christian Medical (MCM) comprehensive specialized hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Methodology: A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted at MCM comprehensive specialized hospital on surgical patients with postoperative surgical site infections that have culture and sensitivity tests between January 2019 and January 2022. Socio-demographic and clinical characteristics data were collected through a retrospective assessment of medical records from the microbiology laboratory unit. Finally, data were analyzed by the statistical package for social science (SPSS) version 25 for windows software.  Results: A total of 74 cases with culture growth and sensitivity tests were found from SSI during the study period. Of these isolates, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Acinetobacter baumannii were the most common growths 14/74 (18.9%) and 13/74 (17.5%) respectively with 58 (78.4%) being gram-negative isolates. Of all the isolates obtained 58/74 (78.4%),) were multidrug-resistant (MDR) strains. More than eighty percent of gram-negative isolates were MDR strains. Conclusion: Most of the isolates found in SSI were gram-negative bacteria, and nearly half of all the isolates obtained were accounted for by gram-negative multidrug-resistant strains. From the results of our study, we recommend a prior antibiotic susceptibility test before treating any SSI due to the high patterns of MDR among isolates.