Comparaison of oral ciprofloxacin with parenteral ceftriaxone in treatment of acute uncomplicated pyelonephritis in women

Acute pyelonephritis is one of the most frequent bacterial infections in women which is usually managed by parenteral antibiotics, that are more expensive than oral ones. A lot of physicians recommend oral ciprofloxacin as a drug of choice to treat acute uncomplicated pyelonephritis. Recently, some patients did not responded to ciprofloxacine practically. This study was to assess treatment efficacy of oral ciprofloxacin with parenteral ceftriaxone in acute uncomplicated pyelonephritis in women. This clinical trial was performed on 47 women who were hospitalized with positive urine culture of acute uncomplicated pyelonephritis in Hashemy-nezhad hospital between 2002 and 2004. In all cases, isolated micro-organism was E.coli. After randomized selection each patient was treated by using one of the two regimens: oral ciprofloxacin or parenteral ceftriaxone. The patients were examined 24, 48, and 72 hours after the beginning of treatment for fever and other clinical symptoms and signs. For the assessment of bacteriologic response, urine cultures were undertaken at the end of the third and seventh day after the beginning of treatment. The obtained data were processed by means of SPSS software. Then, for data description statistical tables were used. Finally, student-t and fisher exact test were employed to analyse the data at the significant level of P0.05. Mean age of subjects was 41.35±10.22 years. Mean age of women treated by ciprofloxacine and ceftriaxone were 41.68±9.30 and 41.12±11.80 years, respectively the difference of which was not significant statistically (P=0.61). Clinical response (negativity of urine cultures at the 3rd and 7th day) to treatment by oral ciprofloxacin and parenteral ceftriaxone revealed no significant difference. Mean symptoms improvement duration in oral ciprofloxacin and parenteral ceftriaxone were 2.67±0.49 and 1.63±0.63 days, respectively and thus, the difference was significant (P=0.000). The survey showed that oral ciprofloxacin is almost as effective as parenteral ceftriaxone but improvement of symptoms by ceftriaxone occurred earlier compared with ciprofloxacin taking.