Objective: To determine the etiology and antimicrobial patterns of neonatal sepsis.

Study Design: Cross-Sectional Place & Duration: Department of Pathology UCM, The University of Lahore for the duration of two years i.e from 1st April 2018 to 31st March 2020.

Methods: Total 500 blood samples of both genders were extracted in this study. Patients demographics were recorded after written consent. All the patients were worked up with complete history, clinical examination and investigations to rule out confounders and bias in the study results. All the follow ups were done by the researcher himself. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was carried out by Modified Kirby Bauer disk diffusion method on Mueller Hinton agar using CLSI protocols.

Results: In this study, 125(25%) were culture positive extracted from 500 blood samples. Out of 125 positive blood cultures, 72(57.6%) were observed gram negative organisms and gram positive organisms were 48(38.4%) and the rest were positive for Candida spp 5(4%). Pseudomonas spp 22(30.5%) was the most common isolated in gram negative organisms while in gram positive organisms Coagulase Negative Staphylococci (CoNS) 33(68.5%) was the most frequent isolated organism. Variable pattern of resistance was seen among other members of enterobacteriaceae, non-fermenters and Gram positive organisms.

Conclusion: It is concluded that the frequency of isolated gram positive organisms were lower in number than that of negative gram organisms due to isolation of Coagulase negative Staphylococci (CoNS) in gram postive and Pseudomonas spp in gram negative.

Keywords: Neonatal sepsis, Bacteriological profile, Antibiotic susceptibility, Neonates