Prevalence of Pathogenic Bacterial Isolates from Ear, Nose and Throat: in a Clinical Setup

Objective: To determine the Prevalence of pathogenic bacterial isolates in swabs obtained from patients with Ear, Nose and Throat Infections. Methodology: This Cross sectional hospital based study was conducted at Otolaryngology outpatients department of Capital Hospital, Islamabad, Pakistan from August, 2014 to July, 2016. Swabs for microbial culture from representative infected area were obtained i.e. ear, nose or throat. These included patients of either gender or age, who presented in the Otolaryngology outpatients with suspected bacterial ear, nose or throat infections on the basis of history and clinical examination. Patients on steroids, those with co-morbidities, immune deficient cases and those who took antibiotics in last one week were excluded. Samples (swabs) were taken throat swabs, processed by routine microbiological culture techniques for microbiological isolation. Data collected included gender, age, area of infection (ear, nose or throat) and pathogenic bacteria isolated. Data was recorded, cross tabulated and analyzed using Microsoft Excel Worksheet. Results: Of the study sample of 1439, 737(51.22%) were males and 702(48.78%) females with mean age of 29.12+19.24 years. These included 811(56.36%) cases of aural, 221(15.35%) cases of nasal and 407 (28.29%) cases of throat infections. 800(55.59%) were culture negative for pathogenic bacteria, while pathogens were isolated in 639(44.41%) cases. Staphylococcus aureus was isolated in majority i e., 434(30.16%), followed by pseudomonas in 167(11.61%) swabs. Conclusion: Staph aureus was the commonest isolate from aural and nasal swabs while majority of throat swabs were negative and in a few streptococcus pneumoniae was isolated, indirectly indicating prevalence of viral infections in the cases with throat infections. This indicates importance of culture and sensitivity in these cases before starting antibiotics