Study of bacterial aetiology of acute respiratory infections and the relationship of clinical features to aetiology in children attending an out-patient Department of a General Hospital.

Abstract

This study was designed to identify the causative bacteria in childhood ARI, focusing mainly on acute lower respiratory tract infection (ALRI) and to find out any clinical indicators of becterial infection of the lower tract.The frequency of bacterial infections in ALRI was found to be 58.3 per cent in inpatients and 60.4 per cent in outpatients. The major pathogenic organism identified in the study was branhamella but has now been recognised as a pathogen (4,45). The other two major pathogens were streotococcus pneumoniae and haemophilus influenzae which have been reported before in many studies (20,38,93). Amoxycillin was found to be the drug of choice to treat these infections.