Sputum culture reports: Is it worth to wait before empirical antibiotics in Community Acquired Pneumonia ?

Dr. Deepak Kumar; Dr. Dharmendra Kumar Mekle

Volume : IX, Issue : VII, July - 2020

Sputum culture reports: Is it worth to wait before empirical antibiotics in Community Acquired Pneumonia ?

Dr. Deepak Kumar, Dr. Dharmendra Kumar Mekle

Abstract :

BACKGROUND:-Community Acquired Pneumonia is a clinical condition having a large variety of etiology with respect to Microbial Agents and treatment modalities varies in accordance with type of Organism involved. Also a crude idea can be taken with patient�s age, associated co-morbidities and local pattern of microbial data obtained from small sized studies done at various parts of country.The aim of this study is to assess the importance of sputum culture in Community Acquired Pneumonia. AIMS &OBJECTIVES :- 1. 1. To study the importance of sputum culture reports in community acquired pneumonia. 2. To document the clinical profile of Community AcquiredPneumonia of indoor patients. 3. To document the sputum culture reports of patients. METHODOLOGY:-We studied sixty patients with clinical diagnosis of Community acquired pneumonia and sent there sputum culture reports to know the culprit organism. We excluded patients with hospital acquired pneumonia and HIV positive patients. Data was assembled in a master chart and analyzed with SPSS 16 software. RESULTS:- Most of the patients were in elderly age group. Most of them had co- morbidities like COAD, smoking and diabetes. 25 patients had developed complications out of 60. Mortality was 10. Sputum culture positivity was 40%. CONCLUSION:- Initial clinical evaluation of patients is still the basis of initiation of empirical antibiotics specially at peripheral health care system. Sputum culture is a time consuming procedure also it is not 100% reliable as culture positivity rate is between 40 to70 per cent in worldwide studies.