%0 Journal Article
%T Secular trends of blood isolates in patients from a rural area population hospitalized in a tertiary center in a small city in Greece
%A Matthew E Falagas
%A Alexandra Bakossi
%A Vasilis D Pappas
%A Pierros V Holevas
%A Antonis Bouras
%A Eleni Stamata
%J BMC Microbiology
%D 2006
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1471-2180-6-41
%X We retrospectively collected and analysed data for the first positive blood culture obtained for each admission for each patient hospitalized in General Hospital of Tripolis, Tripolis, Peloponnesus, Greece during a 5 year period (16/05/2000 ¨C 15/05/2005).Sixty-seven thousand and seventy patients were hospitalized during the study period from whom 3,206 blood cultures were obtained. A higher increase of the number of obtained blood cultures than the number of admissions was noted during the study period (p < 0.001). Three hundred and seventy-three (11.6%) blood cultures were positive. Coagulase-negative staphylococci (35.9%), Escherichia coli (29%), and Staphylococcus aureus (18.2%) were the most commonly isolated pathogens. Among the Staphylococcus aureus isolates, the proportion of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was 17.2% (5/29). The proportion of Escherichia coli resistant to trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole, ampicillin and cefuroxime was 29.6% (32/108), 25.0% (27/108), and 8.3% (9/108) respectively. Imipenem-resistance was noted in 3.4% (1/29) of Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates. There were only 6 (1.6%) Acinetobacter baummanii blood isolates during the study period.The antimicrobial resistance of isolates from patients receiving care at the studied tertiary hospital in a small city in Greece is considerably less compared to that noted in tertiary hospitals in larger cities of the country.There is an increasing incidence of multi drug-resistant (MDR) bacterial infections in several parts of the world [1]. However, the majority of the studies on the secular trends of antimicrobial resistance have been performed in tertiary medical centers in large cities. There is relatively scarcity of information regarding the trends of antimicrobial resistance in patients from rural populations hospitalized in healthcare centers in small cities. Thus, we sought to collect and analyze data relevant to this significant public health problem from the General Ho
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2180/6/41