A Study of Bacteriological Profile of Bacterial Isolates in Sputum Samples in Azadi Teaching Hospital in Duhok City

Abstract

The objective of this current study is to examine the bacteriological profile of microorganisms isolated in sputum samples collected from the patients in the Azadi Teaching Hospital in Duhok City. The current cross-sectional observational study was carried out in the Laboratory of Microbiology, Department of the Basic Science, College of Nursing at the University of Duhok, Kurdistan region, Iraq. A total of 150 patients with clinically verified bacterial infections were included in the study using a gram-staining and routine sampling procedure. Microscopic examination of the gram-stained sputum smears was done to assess the presence of epithelial cells, pus cells, or organisms. Consequently, 83 bacterial samples yielded positive results that indicated the presence of bacterial growth, while the remaining samples 67 did not exhibit any bacterial growth or normal flora. On assessing the organisms isolated from the study subjects, it was observed that out of 150 processed sputum samples, 44.7% (n=67) were non-bacterial samples and 55.3% (n=83) were pathogenic bacterial samples. It was seen that the most common isolated organism was Klebsiella pneumoniae in (44.6%; 37/83), followed by Pseudomonas aeruginosa in (35%; 29/83), and then Escherichia coli in (20.4%; 17/83), were the most frequently isolated microorganisms from sputum samples of patients with upper or lower respiratory infections. The current study comes to the conclusion that in order to obtain lower respiratory tract infection samples from subjects, high-quality sputum must be obtained, and initial sputum screening should be carried out.