Evaluation of urine cultures of adult patients; data from erbil

Introduction Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are a common infectious disease and a public health problem that imposes a large economic burden. The main cause of UTI in humans is gram-negative bacteria, especially Escherichia coli. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of gram-negative uropathogens in urine samples of patients referred to Erbil clinics and hospitals and to evaluate their antimicrobial susceptibility. all urine cultures result of patients referred to Erbil hospitals in the last 5 years (2015-2020) were included in the census method. Microorganisms were identified by standard culture method and their susceptibility was assessed by VITEK 2 automated system. the data were analyzed using SPSS version 26.0 software. The results of descriptive analysis were reported by tables and graphs. Chi-square test was used to examine the relationship between variables. A significance level of 0.05 was considered. The results of urine culture of 3380 suspected UTI cases were examined, of which 69.1% were female and 30.9% were male. Out of 3097 positive cultures observed, a total of 1961 (63.3%) isolates were gram-negative bacteria and 1136 (36.7%) were gram-positive pathogens. The most common gram-negative urinary pathogen determined in this study was Escherichia coli. The highest resistances of gram-negative urinary pathogens were against the antibiotic ampicillin, Trimethoprim / Sulfamethoxazole and ceftriaxone, and the lowest resistances were for amikacin, meropenem, ertapenem and imipenem. Keywords: Urine Culture; Urinary Tract Infections; Antimicrobial Resistance