Distribution and Change in Drug Resistance of Enterococcus in Hospital

OBJECTIVE To investigate the characteristic of distribution and the change in drug resistance of Enterococcus in hospital to provide reference for clinical therapy.METHODS The distribution and drug resistance of 99 strains of enterococci isolated from various clinical specimens of the infections from 2002 to 2005 were retrospectively analyzed.RESULTS The Gram-positive cocci isolated from clinical specimens in our hospital accounted for 34.2%,enterococci accounted for 3.0%,and they showed an increasing tendency in recent years.Among 99 strains of enterococci,the most organism was Enterococcus faecalis(62.6%),the second was E.faecium(25.2%).The main localities from where the enterococci isolated were respiratory tract(36.3%),then blood origin(20.2%) and urinary tract(18.8%).Enterococci strains were resistant to multiple antibiotics,but sensitive to piperacillin/tazobactam,nitrofurantoin,rifampicin and vancomycin.The resistance rates of E.faecium to penicillin,piperacillin,piperacillin/tazobactam,ciprofloxacin and vancomycin were significantly higher than that of E.faecalis, but contrary to tetracycline.Compared with the drug resistance rates of E.faecalis to penicillin,gentamicin,high level gentamicin,tetracycline,ciprofloxacin,ceftazidime and vancomycin in 2002,they were significantly increased in 2005(P0.05 or P0.01), and the drug resistance rates of E.faecium to penicillin,erythromycin,ciprofloxacin,chloramphenicol and tetracycline significantly decreased in 2005(P0.05 or P0.01),but to vancomycin was 32.0%.CONCLUSIONS The most common enterococci causing hospital infection are E.faecalis and E.faecium.The drug resistance rate of E.faecium is higher than that of E.faecalis.The antibacterial agents should be reasonably applied according to antimicrobial susceptibility test during clinical therapy,further more,the necessary steps should be carried out else to prevent the enterococcal infection.