Epidemiology and emerging resistance in bacterial bloodstream infections in patients with hematologic malignancies

AbstractBackground: The objective of this study was determine the frequency of bloodstream infections (BSIs) and the causative bacteria and their resistance patterns in patients with hematological malignancies (HMs) in a large tertiary care university hospital in Turkey over a 5-year period. Methods: A total of 2098 patients with HMs with 3703 neutropenic episodes were included. Patients were classified as high-risk (n = 843) and low-risk (n = 1255) groups and evaluated for frequency of BSIs, causative bacteria, and their resistance patterns. Results: The frequency of BSIs was 14.5%. The frequency of gram-negative BSIs in high-risk and low-risk groups was 10.7% and 5.4% (p < 0.001), respectively. The frequency of gram-positive BSIs in high-risk and low-risk groups was 7.0% and 3.9% (p < 0.001), respectively. Gram-negative bacteria predominated (52.6%), with Escherichia coli (17.3%) and Klebsiella spp. (11.0%) as the most frequent organisms. Coagulase-negative staphylococci (10.4%) and Corynebacterium spp....