Pathogenic Staphylococci Isolated at Boston City Hospital in 1958

Abstract

In a recent paper, Finland, Jones, and Bennett¹reported on the antibiotic sensitivity and phage types of pathogenic staphylococci isolated from hospitalized patients and autopsies at the Boston City Hospital during the latter half of 1955. Some relationship was demonstrated between resistance of strains to the most widely used antibiotics and prior antibiotic therapy of the patients from whom the strains were obtained. It was also shown that marked differences in the antibiotic-resistant pattern of strains isolated at different times from the same source or from different sources at the same time in any given patient were usually related to the occurrence or introduction of different strains, as judged by their phage types, and only occasionally were they related directly to the antibiotic or antibiotics previously used in the treatment of the patient. The present study was carried out on strains of Staphylococcus aureus isolated from infected patients at