Bacteraemia in a tertiary care urban hospital in south India.

A total of 1727 blood samples were cultured aerobically over a one year period, of which 201(11.8%) were positive. The ratio of Gram positive to Gram negative bacteraemia was 1:1. The three antimicrobials having the highest activities against the Gram positive isolates were amikacin, cefotaxime, and ciprofloxacin to which 88.5, 81.7 and 80.7 percent of the strains were susceptible: and the same agents were equally effective against Gram negative organisms with 84.5, 75.3 and 70.1 percent efficacy respectively. Coagulase negative Staphylococcus spp. was the most frequent organism isolated(60; 29.8%), followed by Pseudomonas aeruginosa (40; 19.9%), and Staphylococcus aureus (34; 16.9%).