Acinetobacter bacteremia in Hong Kong: Prospective study and review

The epidemiological characteristics of 18 patients with acinetobacter bacte remia were analyzed. Patients (mean age, 55.5 years) developed bacteremia a fter an average of 14.1 days of hospitalization. Fifteen of 16 patients sur vived bacteremia caused by Acinetobacter baumannii. Cultures of blood from the remaining two patients yielded Acinetobacter lwoffii. Most patients (78 %) resided in the general ward, while four patients (22%) were under intens ive care. Genotyping by arbitrarily primed polymerase chain reaction analys is and the temporal sequence of isolation were more useful than phenotyping by antimicrobial susceptibility in the determination of the source of bact eremia, and the intravascular catheter was the leading infection source (39 % of cases). The possibility of an association of glucose with the pathogen esis of acinetobacter infection was raised.