Prevalence of asymptomatic bacteriuria in elderly referred to outpatient clinics in Talegani hospital, Abadan, Iran

Introduction and objective: Asymptomatic bacteriuria (ASB) is the presence of significant numbers (≥10⁵CFU/ml) of bacteria in the urine accompanying. The occurrence of ASB is widespread among elderly population. This study detected the prevalence of ASB in the elderly referred to the Taleghani hospital in Abadan, Iran.

Materials and methods: A total of 265 outpatients female and male aged between 60-90 years old who attended of Taleghani hospital in Abadan south western of Iran with no dysuria, frequency and urgency, fever, chills and flank pain, and were screened by collecting mid-stream urine samples for identification of the asymptomatic bacteriuria. The bacteria were isolated and disk diffusion method was used to study their patterns of antibacterial susceptibility.

Results: Asymptomatic bacteriuria was observed in 10.9% cases with predominant prevalence in female. A total of 29 isolated bacteria, Staphylococcus saprophyticus was considered as the most frequent organism which was accountable for 34.5% of the cases of ASB, and followed by Escherichia coli (31%), Klebsiella pneumoniae (17.2%), Proteus mirabilis (6.9%), S. aureus (6.9%) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (3.4%). The resistance of the isolated bacteria to cephalotin and nitrofurantion were 78.3 and 69.1%, respectively. Most of the bacteria were sensitive to cefixime and ofloxacin.

Conclusion: Nearly 11% of elderly person were identified to suffer from asymptomatic bacteriuria, and S. saprophyticus was a common pathogen.

Significance and impact of the study: The elderly over 60 years has substantial risk of suffering from ASB, therefore they indispensable an accidental perform usual urine culture.