Bacteraemia among patients attending a cancer hospital in Lahore, Pakistan

Bacteraemia can be life-threatening, particularly in the neutropenic cancer patient, and any episode of pyrexia is treated empirically with antibiotics, and a blood culture taken. Over an 18-month period, 3025 (934 patients) blood culture sets were received by the microbiology department of the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, Lahore, Pakistan. The blood culture sets used a blood/tryptone soya broth (1:5 ratio) mixture and were manually subcultured onto appropriate media following incubation at 37 degrees C. Of these, 406 (13.4%) were positive for bacteria or yeasts, the most common organisms being coagulase-negative staphylococci (16%), Escherichia coli (15.1%), other Enterobacteriaceae (11.8%), Staphylococcus aureus (9.1%) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (8.6%). In addition, a number of unusual organisms were isolated which could have been peculiar to this institution or to patients with neoplastic disease. Sensitivity patterns for the major groups of organisms were compared with the previous year's figures (where available), to identify any change.