Antibiotic susceptibility patterns of selected bacterial isolates in a general hospital in Kuwait

During a 7-month period beginning February 1989 a total of 3387 bacteria were isolated aerobically from clinical materials at Al-Adan Hospital laboratory. Their susceptibilities to 14 commonly used antibiotics were analysed. Escherichia coli was the most frequently isolated organism among all Gram-negative bacilli. In general, members belonging to Enterobacteriaceae presented higher resistance to ampicillin, trimethoprim-sulphamethoxazole, and cephalothin, the exception being Salmonella spp. Of all the aerobic Gram-positive cocci, Staphylococcus aureus was the most common isolate and showed excellent susceptibility to methicillin (96%) but high resistance to penicillin (94%). We compared our data with susceptibility profiles of 1678 strains isolated in Mubarak Al-Kabeer Hospital during a 4-month period in 1984. This retrospective comparative study in the two hospitals presented some differences, the reasons for which are discussed in this paper.