[Bacteremia: a Spanish multicenter study with 5000 cases. The Hospital Infection Study Group (GEIH)]

Bacteremia is one of the most common nosocomial infections and is still a severe condition that frequently represents a life-threatening problem for the patient.

SEPSIS DATA is a software programme developed by the SEIMC (Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology) nosocomial infection study group, and it has been designed to collect under common criteria bacteremia cases from Spanish hospitals. In this study, we analyse the results from the first 5,000 cases prospectively collected from 34 hospitals with the following distribution by number of beds: 8 hospitals with less than 200, 15 between 200 and 499.6 between 500 and 999 and 5 with more than 1,000 beds.

Male patients (60%), older than 61 years (52%) are the predominant group. Bacteremia acquisition was extra-hospital in 58% of the cases. Most frequent underlying disease was neoplasm (22%) and 9% of the patients had HIV infection. Most frequent bacteremia sources were urinary tract (19.6%), primary (16%) and respiratory tract (15%). Most commonly isolated micro-organisms were E. coli (23%). S. aureus (13%), coagulase-negative Staphylococci (12%) and S. pneumoniae (8%). Microorganisms average time to grow in laboratory was 1.95 days. Origin focus of bacteremia was reported in 30% of the cases. Antibiotic therapy used was active against pathogen isolate in 96% of the cases. Adequate treatment was started empirically from the first day in 76% of the cases. Third generation cephalosporines were the antibiotic group most used (28%). Among the observed complications, 7.68% of the episodes occurred with shock and 2.68% with septic metastasis. Crude mortality until the end of episode was 16.64%.