Antimicrobial agent susceptibility patterns of bacteria in hospitals from 1971 to 1982

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Abstract
Bacterial susceptibility to 16 commonly used antibiotics was analyzed for a 12-yr period (from 1971 to 1982, inclusive). Susceptibilities of 5,828,243 strains isolated from a mean of 242 hospitals nationwide and of 194,575 strains isolated at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, and the Bronx Lebanon Hospital Center, New York, New York, USA, were compared. Strains of Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Haemophilus influenzae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa showed virturally the same susceptibilities to antibiotics throughout the 12-yr period; Streptococcus faecalis and Staphylococcus epidermidis showed significant increases in resistance to most antibiotics. The close similarity between antibiotic susceptibilities shown at both the 242 hospitals and the 2 individual hospitals suggests that this analysis accurately reflects trends of bacterial resistance to antibiotics in USA hospitals. Since most of the species analyzed produce serious disease and high mortality, their susceptibility to antibiotics is relevant both to physicians treating infectious diseases and to epidemiologists.