Emerging bacterial drug resistance in hospital practice

The growing multiple drug resistance among bacteria in hospital practice is posing a serious threat to the successful antimicrobial therapy. Our data on the bacterial drug resistance at a tertiary care centre during 1995-1996 has been alarming with an incidence of 73 to 99% resistance to the common antibiotics like ampicillin, chloramphenicol, cotrimoxazole and first generation cephalosporins among the gram negative isolates. The resistance to gentamicin and ciprofloxacin ranged from 53 to 79%. Resistance to amikacin, netilmicin and the third generation cephalosporins ranged from 30 to 73%. The frightening observation was the emergence of resistant isolates which were sensitive only to two drugs, sensitive only to one drug and resistant to all the available antibiotics (2.64, 17.6 and 11.5% respectively) during 1994 to 1996. Resistance among the gram positive bacteria was much less but the increase in methicillin resistant Staphylococci (52-65%) was a serious matter. The data were an eye opener and the infection control measures could bring marginal improvement in the situation in 1996. It is vehemently appealed that the national antibiotic policies be formed and be stringently implemented before we are thrown back to the pre-antibiotic era.