Chloramphenicol resistant enteric fever.

In recent times there have been several reports of chloramphenicol resistant enteric fever necessitating the use of other antimicrobial agents. Clinical profile of 15 chloramphenicol resistant patients of enteric fever was studied. Three such patients (20%) responded to chloramphenicol despite in vitro resistance to the drug. Hence chloramphenicol still remains the drug of first choice in enteric fever as a majority (68.4%--26 out of 38) of our bacteriologically proven enteric fever patients were cured by the drug. The remaining 12 cases responded satisfactorily to ciprofloxacin (46.7%), gentamicin (20%), and ofloxacin (13.3%). There was an increased incidence of complications among the 15 drug resistant cases as compared to 23 cases of chloramphenicol sensitive enteric fever observed during the same period.