Blood culture results during the period 1995-2002 in a Greek tertiary care hospital

Data on BacT/Alert blood cultures in a Greek hospital from 1995 to 2002 were analysed retrospectively. There was a gradual increase in the number of blood cultures (4981 in 1995 to 9054 in 2002), the true positive rate (14.4% to 16.5%) and the number of bloodstream infections/1000 hospital admissions (22.1 to 30.7). The five most common pathogens were Eschericia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, coagulase-negative staphylococci, enterococci and Klebsiella spp. The relative rates of Gram-negative and Gram-positive isolates inverted during the study period because of an increasing frequency of coagulase-negative staphylococci and enterococci.