Prevalence of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus in school children of Pokhara.

Present study was carried out to find out the prevalence of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in school children of Pokhara city in western, Nepal. A total of 184 randomly selected children younger than 15 years were included in the study. Nasal swabs collected were subjected to standard bacteriological culture. S. aureus isolates were identified by mannitol fermentation, coagulase positivity and DNase positivity. Antimicrobial susceptibility test was performed on muller-hinton agar (MHA) by modified Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion method. Out of total 184 nasal swabs, S. aureus was isolated in 31.0% (n=57). Among the isolates, 35.1% (n=20) were from male children whereas 64.9% (n=37) were from female. There was no significant sex difference in colonization of S. aureus. Out of 57 isolates, 56.1% (n=32) were MRSA. MRSA isolates indicated relatively high rate of resistance to antibiotic cloxacillin (68.7%) followed by ofloxacin (40.6%), tetracycline (15.6%), erythromycin (9.4%), ciprofloxacin (6.2%) and vancomycin (3.1%).This study showed a high prevalence of MRSA carriage in school children indicating the spread of MRSA in the community.

The morphology of central tympanic membrane perforations.

The objective of this study was to assess the extent of conductive hearing loss in relation to different sizes and sites of simple central tympanic membrane perforations. Total 100 cases attending ENT OPD, BPKIHS during period of April 2003 to Mar 2004 without any discrimination of sex, race and religion were taken for the cross sectional prospective study. Dry, clean central tympanic membrane perforations due to various causes like chronic suppurative otitis media-tubotympanic, post acute suppurative otitis media residual perforations or simple traumatic perforations with conductive hearing loss and without preexisting hearing loss were clinicoaudiologically evaluated and analyzed. Hearing loss was found to be directly proportional to the size of perforation irrespective of their cause, which was statistically significant. Hearing loss in the study was found to range from negligible to 53dB. Overall, perforations involving posterioinferior quadrant were found to have maximum hearing loss.