STUDY OF ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE IN CHILDREN WITH LOWER RESPIRATORY TRACT INFECTIONS

Background: Antibiotic resistance has steadily compromised standard therapy of bacterial lower respiratory tract infections and in sequence, newer agents, inevitably more costly, have been required. The use of these agents exposes them to risks of resistance emergence and patients to the risk of novel adverse drug reactions.Objective: The aim of our study is to identify the most common bacterial strains that are responsible for antibiotic-resistance in lower respiratory tract infections in children, and their antibiotic sensitivity patterns.Subject and Methods: This study was carried out in pediatric and microbiology departments, Faculty of Medicine, Zagazig University between July 2006 and July 2007. Fifty patients were included in this study, 26 males and 24 females. Their ages ranged from 2-12 years.Results: Ninety percent of our cases had monomicrobial infection; no cases had polymicrobial infection while 10% had –ve culture growth. In the present study out of twelve Klebsiella pneumonia isolates, 8 isolates (66.6%) were found to be ESBL producers and 4 isolates (33, 7%) were negative for ESBL production.Conclusions: K. pneumonia, P. aerugenosa and Streptococcus pyogenus were the most commonly isolated resistant strains from the clinical samples, followed by Staph. areus, proteus and pneumococci. With the exception of imipenem, resistance of pathogens of lower respiratory tract infections to different antibiotics has increased with emergence of high percentage of multidrug resistant strains. Imipenem and amikacin