[Survey of bacterial resistance in Shanghai district]

The data on bacterial resistance monitoring of 5,457 clinical isolates in 1990 against 21 antimicrobial agents showed that most isolates were highly resistant to commonly used antimicrobial agents, such as penicillin, ampicillin, erythromycin, chloramphenicol, tetracycline and gentamicin, with a resistant rate of around 50% or more. Strains resistant to some newer agents, such as cefotaxime, ceftazidime, amikacin and norfloxacin, have appeared and are increasing in number. Multi-resistant strains, i.e. strains resistant to five more antimicrobial agents existed in various bacterial species. Vancomycin was the most active antibiotic against methicillin-resistant staphylococci and no resistant strains were found. Strains of Salmonella and Shigella spp. were still very sensitive to the antimicrobial agents tested, with a sensitive rate of more than 90%. 80% of 765 gentamicin-resistant strains of Enterobacteriaceae were still sensitive to amikacin.