Occurrence of surgical pathogens and their antimicrobial susceptibility patterns.

Objective: To assess the occurrence frequency of bacterial pathogens at the Surgical Wards, Casualty and Outpatient Department (OP) of major Kuwaiti hospital and to compare their antimicrobial susceptibility patterns.

Methods: The Automicrobic System (bioMerieux-Vitek) with respective ready-to-use cards were used for identification of isolates and their susceptibility testing. Vitek DataTrac software automatically tabulated the occurrence rate of pathogens or their antimicrobial susceptibility percentage--for defined periods of time and specified patient locations.