Reappraisal of Community-Acquired Bacteremia: A Proposal of a New Classification for the Spectrum of Acquisition of Bacteremia

In recent years, dramatic changes in health care systems have shifted much of the care of sick individuals from hospitals to the community. Consequently, infections traditionally classified as community-acquired or hospital-acquired infections cannot now be readily classified into either category. We thus propose a new classification based on a wider spectrum of acquisition. A total of 1028 episodes of bloodstream infection (BSI) were divided into 5 categories: true community-acquired infections (370 episodes [36%]), infections in recently discharged patients (110 [11%]), infections associated with invasive procedures performed just before or at the time of admission (56 [5%]), infections in patients admitted from nursing homes (68 [7%]), and hospital-acquired infections (424 [41%]). Thus, 234 (39%) of the 604 bloodstream infections traditionally defined as community acquired were reclassified into 3 newly defined groups, each of which has distinct epidemiologic, clinical, and bacteriologic characteristics, as well as distinct antimicrobial susceptibility profiles. There is a conceptual and practical need for such a new classification.