uropathogens antibiotic susceptibility as an indicator for the empirical therapy used for urinary tract infections: a retrospective observational study

Background and objectives: urinary tract infection (uti) is a common infection affects people of different ages. it is important to explore the antibiotics susceptibility of the bacterial agents to improve the empirical antibacterial prescription because of emerging of multi-drug resistant (mdr) bacteria. materials and methods: this is a retrospective observational study including 322 patients with uti at the largest hospital at the center of al-basrah governorate in the far south of iraq from august 2018 to november 2019. bacterial isolates from urine samples with significant bacteria were investigated by automated vitek® 2 compact system to determine the causative bacteria and their antibiotics susceptibility. results: escherichia coli and klebsiella pneumoniae were the first and second most frequent gram-negative isolates, whereas staphylococcus haemolyticus and enterococcus faecalis were the first and second most frequent gram-positive isolates. fosfomycin, tigecycline, colistin, meropenem, imipenem, amikacin and nitrofurantoin had high susceptibility rates against gram-negative isolates. nitrofurantoin, tigecycline, daptomycin, teicoplanin, vancomycin and linezolid had a high effect against gram-positive isolates. conclusion: the leading causative isolates especially the most predominant gram-negative isolates e. coli and k. pneumoniae show high resistance rates against important antibiotics including penicillin/β-lactamase inhibitors piperacillin/tazobactam, ceftazidime cefepime, ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin and trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole which call for reconsidering them for treatment of uti.