Frequency of Pseudomonas aeruginosa serotypes in burn wound infections and their resistance to antibiotics.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa plays a prominent role as an etiological agent involved in serious infections in burned patients. In this study P. aeruginosa infections were analyzed at the Motahari Burn Center in Tehran (from 22 December 1998 to April 1999) to estimate their frequency, antibiotic susceptibility and serotypes. One hundred and eighty-four positive cultures and 205 bacterial strains were isolated among swabs or biopsy specimens during the study period. Pseudomonas was found to be the most common (57%) followed by Acinetobacter (17%), Escherichia coli (12%), Staphylococcus aureus (8%) and other organisms (6%). The frequency of P. aeruginosa resistance to gentamicin, ceftizoxime, carbenicillin, cephalothin and ceftazidime was over 90%. The antibiotics to which P. aeruginosa was most sensitive were amikacin and tetracyclin. The "O" serotypes isolated from the 117 Pseudomona aeroginosa isolates were serotypes O:2, O:5, O:6, O:8, O:11, O:12 and O:16. The most common serotype was O:6 (20/17%) followed by O:11 (18/15%) and O:5 (14/12%). The serotype most resistant was O:16 (8%) and the most sensitive was O:8 (2%). Since treatment of infection with available antibiotics according to the results attained proved to be difficult, prevention of infection in the burned patients is considered as an appropriate means of conquering overcoming infection problems. The sum of frequencies of serotypes O:6, O:11, O:5 and O:16 was more than 60%, therefore vaccination of burn patients with polyvalent antiserum to these serotypes could possibly produce immunity in more than half of the burned patients.