[Acute otitis media: prevalence of ear pathogens in patients at a public hospital].

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Acute otitis media (AOM) is one of the most common diseases in childhood and is the most common cause of antibiotic prescriptions in children. The gold standard for identifying the pathogens causing AOM is tympanocentesis. This is only possible in the stage of AOM when exudate is retained in the middle ear. The aim of this study was to describe the prevalence of organisms causing AOM in eutrophic patients at a public paediatric hospital. MATERIAL AND METHODS We included all patients with AOM diagnosed by otomicroscopy with purulent exudate retained in middle ear and suppurative AOM with inadequate drainage consulting at the Otorhinolaryngology Department in a paediatric tertiary care centre from 2 May 2009 to 31 August 2010. RESULTS There were 324 patients included in the study, with 180/324 (55.6%) being male. The median age was 8 months (interquartile range: 4 to 15 months). Bilateral AOM was recorded in 109/324 (33.6%) patients (433 samples for culture were obtained by tympanocentesis in 324 patients). At diagnosis, 37% (120/324) of the children had been receiving antimicrobial treatment. Of the patients who had received antibiotics, 71/120 (59.1%) had bacterial growth in middle ear fluid (MEF) cultures, with 51/71 (71.8%) being susceptible to the antibiotic they received; 20/71 (28.2%) patients were receiving an antibiotic that did not cover the spectrum of organisms isolated. CONCLUSION The pathogens most frequently isolated are Streptococcus pneumoniae (39.5%), Haemophilus influenzae (37.4%), Moraxella catarrhalis (6.1%) and Streptococcus pyogenes (3.0%).