European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Abstract

Introduction:Asymptomatic bacteriuria in pregnancy can lead to complications like urinary tract infections (UTI), pyelonephritis, pre-eclampsia, toxaemia, low birth weight, intra uterine growth retardation, preterm labour, preterm premature rupture of membrane and post-partum endometritis. There is insufficiency of data regarding prevalence, causative organism and antibiotic sensitivity pattern in all three trimesters of pregnancy. Thus to prevent the complications screening for ASB has been suggested for all pregnant women attending antenatal clinics.
Aims:To determine the prevalence of asymptomatic bacteriuria in three trimesters of pregnancy at a tertiary care hospital of north India.
Materials and Methods: All asymptomatic pregnant females attending the antenatal clinic at district hospital of Barabanki were included in the study except those with symptoms of UTI such as dysuria, urgency, frequency & fever. Isolation and identification were done as per standard laboratory protocol. Antimicrobial susceptibility test was done as per CLSI guidelines.
Results: In this study, 900 pregnant females were screened for ASB out of which 87 (9.6%) were culture positive.The prevalence of ASB was 10.24% (39 out of 381) in primigravida, 10% (30 out of 300) in secundigravida and 5.55% (9 out of 162) in gravida 3 and 15.78% (9 out of 57) in gravida 4. Theculture positivity associated with the gestational agewas found to be 24.13% (21) in the 1^st trimester, 34.48% (30) in the 2^nd trimester and 41.37% (36) in the 3^rd trimester. Majority (75.87%) of the culture positive isolates were gram negative viz, E.coli(34.48%), Klebsiella(24.14%) and Proteus(17.24%).
Conclusion: Routine antenatal urine cultures should be done periodically in every trimester in order to screen ASB and appropriate treatment should be provided along with general health education regarding personnel hygiene and habits to avoid further complications specially to the 1^st trimester OPD patients as they are found to be the most affected group in this study.