Microorganisms and Antibiotic Resistance of Bacterial Keratitis at a Rural County Hospital in Seville

To review the incidence, resistance patterns, and management of bacterial keratitis during the past 4 years.

We retrospectively reviewed the clinical records of microbiological isolates from patients with a clinical diagnosis of bacterial keratitis.

A total of 159 patients were analyzed, and 102 microorganisms were isolated from 129 cultures. In these cultures, 23.7% of the microorganisms were gram positive, 60.8% were gram negative, and 15.5% were fungi. Pseudomonas aeruginosa was the most common bacteria (9.2%), followed by Serratia marcescens (4.4%) and Staphylococcus aureus (4%). Resistance to fluoroquinolones and aminoglycosides was found to be 23.1% and 53.1% in gram-positive and 2.8% and 13.9% in gram-negative bacteria, respectively. Resistance to ceftazidime against gram-negative bacteria was 13.9%. No resistance to vancomycin was observed.

A high resistance rate to aminoglycosides and fluoroquinolones was observed in gram-positive bacteria. We concluded that fluoroquinolones or aminoglycosides may not be suitable for initial monotherapy in patients with severe bacterial keratitis.