Background: Antibiotic resistance is a serious threat to the human populations everywhere. However, less attention is given to its concern in sub-Saharan Africa including Ethiopia. There is information gap for the prescribers regarding antibiotic resistance and its pattern. The aim of this study was to review the antimicrobial resistance pattern of bacteria in Wolaita Sodo University Teaching Referral Hospital.
Methods: Three years retrospective data of cultures and records of 330 patients were used to analyze the antibiotic sensitivity pattern. The statistical softwares including Epidata 3.5.1 and SPSS version 21 were used. Laboratory records lacking age, sex, culture isolation or drug susceptibility test data were excluded.
Results: Out of 330 samples extracted from the microbiology laboratory, 150 samples were culture positive for bacteria isolates. From positive culture growth, 73.3% were gram positive bacteria whereas 26.7% were gram negative. Staphylococcus aureus was the most prevalent isolate among gram-positive isolates as Escherichia coli was for gram negative isolates. Overall antimicrobial resistance of gram positive isolates was 54.2% where as that of gram negative bacteria was 60.0%.
Conclusion: As per this study, S. aureus and E. coli were the pathogenic isolates of highest prevalence among gram positive and gram-negative bacteria, respectively, in the study population. Most of the isolated pathogens showed high resistance towards the commonly prescribed antimicrobial agents.