Stenotrophomonas maltophilia Infections in Geriatric Patients

Author Info

Don Walter Kannangara Dhyanesh Pandya Roopa Anmolsingh

Corresponding Author

Don Walter Kannangara
St Luke’s Health network, Warren Campus, Phillipsburg, NJ 08865, USA

A B S T R A C T

We present Stenotrophomonas maltophilia infections in 317 hospitalized patients in a large health network over a 3-year period. The majority of patients were elderly. Most infections were polymicrobial: respiratory 95.2%, wound 91%, urinary 80.8% and blood 64.3%. Younger patients were small in number and were more common in those with otitis externa, infections from injection drug use and those with line infections. Most deaths were in patients with terminal conditions and polymicrobial infections and mortality could not be directly attributed to Stenotrophomonas maltophilia. None of the sputum, bronchial, urinary or wound culture positive patients had positive blood cultures. Only blood (14/317) or ear (7/317) culture positive patients had significant numbers of younger individuals with only 3 out of 14 over age 50 in blood culture positive patients and 1/7 in those with otitis externa. Those with bacteremia included patients with injection drug use, chronic pain syndromes and vascular catheter infections. 94% of urinary infections, 91.7% wound infections and 85.8% respiratory isolates were in those above age 50. Overwhelming majority of urinary infections were in males with drainage devices present in 75%. Recurrent infections were uncommon. Respiratory specimens were frequently associated with tracheostomies and endotracheal tubes. Most wound infections were in chronic lower extremity ulcers. Prior carbapenem use was not significant in this study. Isolates from all sites were over 98% susceptible to Trimethoprim/sulphamethoxazole. Limitations: The study group only had 1 organ transplant and 2 cystic fibrosis patients and no burn wound infections.

Article Info

Article Type

Research Article

Publication history

Received: Thu 23, Jul 2020
Accepted: Mon 24, Aug 2020
Published: Tue 01, Sep 2020

Copyright

© 2023 Don Walter Kannangara. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Hosting by Science Repository.
DOI: 10.31487/j.GGR.2020.02.05