Septicemia Due toKlebsiella pneumoniaeOriginating from a Hand-Cream Dispenser

SECONDARY infection is a major hazard to the hospitalized patient.1 , 2 Numerous institutionacquired infections, attributed to a wide variety of sources and micro-organisms, have been described. The purpose of this report is to identify a unique source recognized during an outbreak of septicemia involving 6 of 13 patients in a medical intensive-care unit. The origin was traced to a dispensing bottle of contaminated lanolin hand cream.Epidemiolocic BackgroundWithin a seventy-two-hour period (February 15 to 17, 1967) 6 patients in the medical intensive care unit had fever, shaking chills, mental confusion or transient hypotension (Table 1). Blood cultures from 5 yielded . . .