Emerging Infectious Diseases (Sep 2003)

Aggregated Antibiograms and Monitoring of Drug-Resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae

  • Chris A. Van Beneden,
  • Catherine Lexau,
  • Wendy Baughman,
  • Brenda Barnes,
  • Nancy M. Bennett,
  • P. Maureen Cassidy,
  • Margaret Pass,
  • Lisa Gelling,
  • Nancy L. Barrett,
  • Elizabeth R. Zell,
  • Cynthia G. Whitney

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3201/eid0909.020620
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 9
pp. 1089 – 1095

Abstract

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Community-specific antimicrobial susceptibility data may help monitor trends among drug-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae and guide empiric therapy. Because active, population-based surveillance for invasive pneumococcal disease is accurate but resource intensive, we compared the proportion of penicillin-nonsusceptible isolates obtained from existing antibiograms, a less expensive system, to that obtained from 1 year of active surveillance for Georgia, Tennessee, California, Minnesota, Oregon, Maryland, Connecticut, and New York. For all sites, proportions of penicillin-nonsusceptible isolates from antibiograms were within 10 percentage points (median 3.65) of those from invasive-only isolates obtained through active surveillance. Only 23% of antibiograms distinguished between isolates intermediate and resistant to penicillin; 63% and 57% included susceptibility results for erythromycin and extended-spectrum cephalosporins, respectively. Aggregating existing hospital antibiograms is a simple and relatively accurate way to estimate local prevalence of penicillin-nonsusceptible pneumococcus; however, antibiograms offer limited data on isolates with intermediate and high-level penicillin resistance and isolates resistant to other agents.

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