Antimicrobial resistance of Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains isolated from surgical infections in a 7-year period at a general hospital in Venezuela.

Background: By definition, the term "surgical infection" implies that surgery plays the major role in therapy, whereas antimicrobial chemotherapy is only supplementary. Despite this view, the efficacy of such drugs is relevant, and for this reason, drug activity surveillance is necessary, especially for opportunistic and nosocomial pathogens such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa. We evaluated bacterial isolates from patients with suspected surgical infections in a hospital of Caracas, Venezuela (West General Hospital) between 1997 and 2003.

Comparative study of antimicrobial resistance of Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains isolated from patients of Caracas and Asunción in a 4-year-period.

The antimicrobial resistance of Pseudomonas aeruginosa to beta-lactams, aminoglycosides and ciprofloxacin was investigated in two Latin American hospitals, one in Venezuela and the other in Paraguay. The resistance of P. aeruginosa was investigated in 1,481 clinically isolated strains, 988 from Asunción and 493 from Caracas, collected between 1996 and 1999.