Retrospective view on fungal and bacterial profile in the suspected cases of keratitis

Purpose: To study the microbial profile in the cases of keratitis. Materials and Methods: Retrospective cross-sectional study conducted during the period of January 2018 to January 2019. Corneal scrapping from suspected case of keratitis were subjected for microscopy and culture. Growth was examined for wet mount, colony morphology from culture tubes and plates, susceptibility of gram negative and gram-positive organism was done according to standard protocol (CLSI 2018). Result: In our study total of 239 samples, 17(7.1%) samples were only Microscopy positive, 69 (28.8%) samples were bacterial culture positive and 43 (17.9%) were fungal culture positive. Organisms isolated from bacterial culture were Staph, Pseudo, E. coli, Proteus, Enterobacter and Klebsiella species. Aspergillus, Fusarium, Microsporum, Curvalaria & Candida spp were isolated from fungal culture. No mixed growth was observed in our study. Conclusion: In our study we found about 28.8% of cases were positive for bacterial growth. Clinicians usually neglect bacterial cause of keratitis, so a good microbiological investigation play major role in management of corneal infection. Keywords: CLSI- Clinical & Laboratory, Standards Institute, Scrapping, Keratitis.