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Abstract
<p class="first" id="d20223935e89">The rapid emergence (from 0% before 1998 to 6.5%
in 2000) of pandrug-resistant Acinetobacter
baumannii (PDRAB) was noted in a university hospital in Taiwan. To understand the
epidemiology of these isolates, we studied 203 PDRAB isolates, taken from January
1999 to April 2000: 199 from 73 hospitalized patients treated at different clinical
settings in the hospital and 4 from environmental sites in an intensive-care unit.
Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis analysis and random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD)
generated by arbitrarily primed polymerase chain reaction of these 203 isolates showed
10 closely related genotypes (10 clones). One (clone 5), belonging to pulsotype E
and RAPD pattern 5, predominated (64 isolates, mostly from patients in intensive care).
Increasing use of carbapenems and ciprofloxacin (selective pressure) as well as clonal
dissemination might have contributed to the wide spread of PDRAB in this hospital.
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