Antibiotic resistance monitoring of nosocomial clinical isolates

: The authors evaluate the epidemiological trend of in vitro resistance of 2,196 clinical isolates, chiefly Gram-negative, in Caltagirone hospital in 1998/99 to piperacillin-tazobactam, piperacillin, cefotaxime, ceftazidime, ceftriaxone, imipenem, ciprofloxacin and tobramicin. The resistance percentage is reported for each year in order to study the phenomenon in time. The following results were obtained: resistance frequently increases or rarely stays constant in time for all antibiotics used; the resistance percentage is very high for some strains of bacteria; monitoring of resistance in a hospital can help in choosing the empirical therapy. Piperacillin-tazobactam, imipenem and ciprofloxacin were the most active drugs against clinical isolates.