Secular trends of antimicrobial resistance of blood isolates in a newly founded Greek hospital

Background: Antimicrobial resistance is one of the most challenging issues in modern medicine. Methods: We evaluated the secular trends of the relative frequency of blood isolates and of the pattern of their in vitro antimicrobial susceptibility in our hospital during the last four and a half years. Results: Overall, the data regarding the relative frequency of blood isolates in our newly founded hospital do not differ significantly from those of hospitals that are functioning for a much longer period of time. A noteworthy emerging problem is the increasing antimicrobial resistance of Gram-negative bacteria, mainly Acinetobacter baumannii and Klebsiella pneumoniae to various classes of antibiotics. Acinetobacter baumannii isolates showed an increase of resistance to amikacin ( p = 0.019), ciprofloxacin ( p = 0.001), imipenem ( p < 0.001), and piperacillin/ tazobactam ( p = 0.01) between the first and second period of the study. Conclusion: An alarming increase of the antimicrobial resistance of Acinetobacter baumannii isolates has been noted during our study.