Bacterial Isolates and Resistance Patterns in Preterm Infants with Sepsis in Selected Hospitals in Ethiopia: A Longitudinal Observational Study.

Neonatal sepsis is the third leading cause of neonatal mortality, behind prematurity and intrapartum-related complications. The main objectives of this study are to assess the proportion of sepsis in preterm newborns and identify the etiologic agents and their antibiotic sensitivity patterns. A longitudinal observational study was done from July 2016 to May 2018. Whenever clinical diagnosis of sepsis was made, blood cultures and antibiotic susceptibility tests were done. We did 690 blood cultures, 255 (36.9%) showing bacterial growth. The most commonly isolated bacteria were 78 (36.6%), 42 (19.7%) and 39 (18.3%). Gram-positive bacteria showed high resistance to penicillin (98.9%) and ceftriaxone (91.3%) whereas Gram-negative bacteria were highly resistant to gentamicin (83.2%) and ceftriaxone (83.2%). Resistance to the more commonly used antibiotics such as ampicillin and gentamycin was very high, necessitating reconsideration of the empiric use of these antibiotics.