| Abstract: | ![]()
The purpose of this study was to examine the occurrence and the present clinical significance of multiresistant strains of Staphylococcus epidermidis (MSE) at the departments of internal medicine, general surgery, neurology and lung diseases of an university hospital. All those 178 consecutive in-patients from whom, during a half-year investigation period, a strain of MSE was isolated, were immediately enrolled in the study. A strain was defined as multiresistant if it was resistant to 3 or more antimicrobial agents. The clinical course of the patients was followed prospectively daily for any sign of infection. The multiresistant strains amounted to 57.9% of all recovered Staph. epidermidis strains. The mean age of the patients was 50.3 years. A chronic underlying disease was present in 97%. There was a clinical infection in 155 patients, and in 115 of these (65% of the total) the MSE very probably was the true pathogen. The distribution of these infections was as follows: wound infection in 49 (43%), urinary tract infection in 43 (37%), local soft tissue infection in 13 (11%) and septicaemia in 10 (9%) patients. In 40 patients (22% of the total) the role of the MSE in the infection remained uncertain and in 23 patients (13%) the finding obviously was an accidental skin contamination. |
