Bacterial infections in patients with appendicitis in Hilla City, Iraq

الملخص EN

Background : Appendicitis is an inflammation of the appendix, which along the tube of tissue extends from the large intestine.

The study suggested that the appendix may have some role in gut immunity.

Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate the bacterial infection in patients with appendicitis and study the distribution of appendicitis with sex and age groups in addition to clinical signs.

Materials and Methods : The study was done on 78 patients ranged from 5 to 65 years (47 males and 31 females) who were attended to Hilla Teaching Hospital in Babylon province and diagnosed as acute appendicitis by surgeons; all specimens were sent to the bacteriology laboratory in Stuart’s transport medium.

The swab was cultured on different type of culture media to identification of bacteria.

Results: From 78 samples, only 51 (65.3 %) were positive to bacterial culture whereas 27 (34.6 %) showed no growth of bacteria.

The rate of infection was 33 % in males and 18 % in females.

Results also found that Escherichia coli was predominant with 50.9 % followed by Streptococcus pneumoniae (21.5 %), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (13.7 %), and Klebsiella pneumoniae (9.8 %), while Staphylococcus aureus has shown a lowest isolation rate.

Results revealed that 3.9 % of clinical signs and symptoms of appendicitis were dominated right iliac fossa pain in 35.5 % and fever in 26.9% of patients.

Conclusion: From this study, we can conclude that there was a relation between bacterial infections and E.

coli which was predominant and it was recorded that the infection in males was more than in females in patients with appendicitis.