Role of airborne transmission in staphylococcal infections.

Staphylococcal Infection as Cause of Death MEDIALJOAL 319 borne invasion by Gram-negative organisms might have occurred. In Adamson's (1949) careful necropsy study of lymph-nodes coliform strains isolated from different parts of the body were usually antigenically alike, and the isolation of such organisms was often associated with intra-abdominal disease. He isolated proteus organisms, for instance, from lymph-nodes at 14 necropsies, and reported that seven of the subjects concerned had had gastro-intestinal disease and a further four had renal infections. Again, Brooke and Slaney (1958), observing the occasional development of jaundice after colonic excision for ulcerative colitis, showed that in patients with this condition portal bacteraemia could often be demon- strated. Finally, the numerous reports in recent years on acute bacteraemic shock in prostatectomy patients have also drawn attention to blood-borne invasion by enterobacteria, and, indeed, raise the query whether some of the subjects in the present necropsy series may not have died as a result of unsuspected bacteraemic shock.