• Kyungwon Lee, Ki Hyung Park, Seok Hoon Jeong, Hwan Sub Lim, Jong Hee Shin, Dongeun Yong, Gyoung-Yim Ha, Yunsop Chong, and KONSAR group.
• Department of Laboratory Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 120-752, Korea.
• Yonsei Med. J. 2006 Feb 28; 47 (1): 43-54.

AbstractMonitoring temporal trends of antimicrobial resistance can provide useful information for the empirical selection of antimicrobial agents to treat infected patients and for the control of nosocomial infections. In this study, we analyzed antimicrobial resistance of clinically relevant bacteria in 2003 at Korean hospitals and at a commercial laboratory. The following organism-antimicrobial agent resistance combinations were very prevalent: oxacillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (68%), expanded-spectrum cephalosporin-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae (25%), and fluoroquinolone-resistant Escherichia coli (33%), Acinetobacter spp. (58%), and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (40%). Moreover, gradual increases in vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (20%), cefoxitin-resistant E. coli (10%) and K. pneumoniae (23%), and imipenem-resistant P. aeruginosa (20%) and Acinetobacter spp. (13%) were also observed. The resistance rates of Acinetobacter spp. to most antimicrobial agents at hospitals and at the commercial laboratory were similar. Among the Acinetobacter spp. isolated at a tertiary-care hospital, 46.2% were multidrug-resistant to 9-12 of 13 antimicrobial agents, and 18.3% were panresistant. The exclusion of duplicate isolates at a tertiary-care hospital significantly lowered the proportion of oxacillin-resistant S. aureus, vancomycin-resistant E. faecium, and fluoroquinolone-resistant E. coli.

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