Analysis of community- and hospital-acquired bacteraemia during a recent 5-year period

There are sparse data concerning sex- and age-specific characteristics of community-acquired bacteraemia (CAB) and hospital-acquired bacteraemia (HAB). Between January 2008 and December 2012, we identified 2956 bacteraemia cases, which we classified as CAB, HAB or healthcare-associated bacteraemia (HCAB). Almost half of the pathogens were Escherichia coli in CAB patients. By contrast, Staphylococcus aureus was most frequent (16.2%) in HAB patients. HCAB showed mixed features of CAB and HAB. In CAB, E. coli was significantly more abundant in females than in males (56.9 vs 24.3%, respectively). This trend was most striking in young adults (20-39 years) (77.2% in females vs 11.4% in males). HAB cases showed greater heterogeneity in their associated pathogens. The extended-spectrum β-lactamase-positive rates of E. coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae, respectively, were 31.3 and 33.8% in HAB and 8.8 and 8.4% in CAB. The non-susceptibility rates of S. aureus to oxacillin were 37.4% in CAB and 73.0% in HAB. In conclusion, CAB and HAB showed different distributions of micro-organisms, and these distributions also differed with patient age and sex. In addition, antimicrobial susceptibility needs to be monitored separately.