Background & Objective: The emergence of multi-drug resistant salmonella strains h ave made t h e treatment of typhoid fever difficult all over the world. It is even more complicated w h en t h e hi g h cost of newly marketed antibiotics, their side effects and arising bacterial resistance to them are considered. Knowledge of antibiotic sensitivity and resistance of salmonella can make prevention of side-effects and emergence of resistance as well as the treatment measures more effective in this region.

  Methods : This descriptive study was performed in a 6-year period between 1992-97 on 397 patients who were culture positive (blood and stool) in terms of typhoid. The drug resistance was determined based on the anti-biogram of salmonella separated from blood and stool culture of the patients.

  Results: The total number of patients was 397 (237 males, 160 females). All of the subjects were above 12 years old. The resistance of strains of salmonella separated from the blood and stool culture to an antibiotic was 76.9 and 79.6 percent respectively. Resistance to ampicillin, amoxicillin, co-trimoxazole and chloramphenicol was highest among others. There were 60 strains with multi-drug resistance 34 of which (8.57% of all patients) were separated from blood culture and 26 (6.55% of all patients) from stool-culture. The amount of microorganisms multi-drug resistance separated from blood and stool was 6.55% and 8.57% respectively (15.12% in total).

  Conclusions : Using antibiotics without the knowledge of bacterial resistance and sensitivity can complicate the issue.