Hospital-Acquired Aerobacter Cloacae Infections

SINCE THE introduction and widespread use of antibiotic therapy in hospital practice, certain bacterial species heretofore considered to be nonpathogenic for man are now being recognized as causative agents of severe, and sometimes fatal, infectious disease. At the present time, among the most important of these so-called "opportunist pathogens" are the enteric and similar gram-negative bacilli of theEscherichia, Klebsiella, Proteus, andPseudomonasgenera, which comprise a part of the normal flora of the human body. According to recent reports,¹⁻⁵these organisms are now the scourge of the hospitalized patient, particularly in regard to the type of patient representative of our hospital population: the elderly, debilitated patient who has undergone extensive surgical procedures, or who may receive irradiation, corticosteroids, antineoplastic drugs, or indiscriminate antibiotic therapy. Although the dangerous pathogenic potentialities of the abovementioned gram-negative bacilli are receiving worldwide attention, those relating to the genusAerobacter(which are closely related