Empirical Antibiotic Treatment of Disabled Veterans with Chronic Osteomyelitis

Document Type : Original Research

Authors

Abstract

Aims: Osteomyelitis is a bone infection caused by pyogenic bacteria, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, or fungi. This study aims at determining the best empirical antibiotic treatment of chronic osteomyelitis caused by Staphylococcus aureus infections.
Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in the years 2007- 2012 on 164 disabled imposed war veterans with confirmed diagnosis of osteomyelitis. The E-Test method was used to detect antibiotic sensitivity and resistance in patients with Staphylococcus aureus in their culture.
Results: The results of this research were classified into 3 categories: susceptible, resistant and moderately susceptible. The most effective antibiotic on S. aureus was Vancomycin that was resisted in none of the cultures. In 3.6% of the cultures, S. aureus showed moderate sensitivity to vancomycin. Teicoplanin came second with 5.9% resistance. The most ineffective antibiotic was Cotrimoxazole to which 73.2% of cultures were resistant. In 54.8% of cultures, Staphylococcus was reported as resistant to Methicillin. 0.7 % of the Staphylococcus aureus bacteria resistant to methicillin were sensitive to cotrimoxazole.
Conclusion: Since the results of the culture and antibiogram may take 24 hours to 15 days to be obtained, it is recommended that the specimens prepared in smear should be taken from wounds with gram-positive cocci. Vancomycin or Ticoplanin can be used before culture results are obtained. Factors such as the medication cost, availability of the medicine, patients discharge time and the drugs side effects should be taken into consideration when choosing between these two antibiotics.

Keywords

Journal of Military Medicine
Volume 14, Issue 3 - Serial Number 49
September and October 2012
Pages 222-225

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics