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Microbiological Etiology of Chronic Cough Associated with Acute Exacerbation of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD): A Study from Karachi, Pakistan

Background:

Acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD) worsens the respiratory symptoms that are usually triggered by infection with bacteria or viruses or by environmental pollutants. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the bacterial etiology from sputum culture in patients suffering from acute exacerbation of COPD, admitted in hospital.

Methods:

The study was cross sectional observational, where sputum bacterial cultures were analyzed from the patients with Acute exacerbation COPD treated in the ICU of a tertiary care hospital for pulmonary disease from January 2019 to December 2019. Two sputum samples were collected from each patient for bacterial examination. The results of sputum bacterial culture ﬁndings were expressed as frequency and percentage by using SPSS.

Results:

In the present study, there were 1296 patients, both males 749 (57.8%) and females 547 (42.2%). The mean age of patients was 57.39±19.74years. 470 (36.3%) showed negative culture reports. 440 (34.0%) patients had Moraxella infection, which was most common organism in all patients, and 149 (11.5%) patients had Pseudomonas infection, 157(12.1%) patients had Yeast Albicans and in only 1 (0.1%) patient Enterobacter infection were found. Other pathogens in low frequency identiﬁed were Haemophilus parainfluenzae, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Escherichia coli and Haemophilus influenzae. It was observed that the frequency of infections was linked with increasing age.

Conclusion:

With increasing age, people are prone to acquire pulmonary infections speciﬁcally COPD. It is therefore very important to perform sputum culture to identify the causative agents and treat the patients with appropriate antibiotic to reduce the episodes of AECOPD.

Keywords: Bacteria; Sputum Culture; COPD; Antibiotic; Cough.