  
Bacterial sepsis now a frequent cause of ICU admission among AIDS patients
Last Updated: 2001-04-13 11:30:37 EDT (Reuters Health)
WESTPORT, CT (Reuters Health) - At the George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, DC, sepsis from bacterial infection is now a more common reason for AIDS patients to be admitted to an intensive care unit than Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia or other classic opportunistic infections.
Dr. Andrew L. Rosenberg, now at the University of Michigan Health Care System in Ann Arbor, and colleagues identified 129 ICU admissions of AIDS patients at George Washington University between December 1993 and June 1996. Seventy-nine percent of the patients were admitted for infections, 45% of which were bacterial, according to the team's report in the March issue of Critical Care Medicine.
The isolates most frequently identified were Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus and other enteric pathogens.
The in-hospital mortality rate was 54% overall; however, for patients with bacterial sepsis, it was 68%. Severity of the illness and severe sepsis were the independent predictors of in-hospital mortality among these patients, Dr. Rosenberg's group notes.
"For ICU admissions of patients with AIDS who present with a septic syndrome, empirical broad-spectrum antibacterial therapy is important when the cause of the sepsis is uncertain," Dr. Rosenberg and colleagues advise.
Crit Care Med 2001;29:548-556.
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