Background and objective: Valid and reliable data regarding sepsis is lacking in Colombia. Our aim was to determine the prevalence of the microorganisms in the main infections treated in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) in our country. Methods: This is a sub-study of a prospective cohort with 10 general hospitals in Colombia during a 6-month period. The inclusion criteria were hospitalization in ICU and confirmation of infection according to the CDC definitions. Patients were classified into three groups, that is, community, hospital and intensive care, according to the site where the infection was acquired. Results: A total of 826 patients were included in this analysis. Of these, 51percent-flag-change developed infections in the community, 5.33percent-flag-change in the hospital and 43.7percent-flag-change in intensive care unit. Overall, the most common diagnoses were pneumonia (29.54percent-flag-change), intra-abdominal infection (18.16percent-flag-change) and urinary tract infection (11.62percent-flag-change). The most frequent germ in community-acquired infections was E. coli -lung (16. 4percent-flag-change), peritoneum (57.7percent-flag-change), urine (55.5percent-flag-change), blood (22.4percent-flag-change)- E. coli -peritoneum (29.3percent-flag-change), urine (52.9percent-flag-change)- also predominated in the ICU-acquired infections, except for lung and blood in which Staphylococcus aureus (32.4percent-flag-change) and Klebsiella pneumoniae (15.7percent-flag-change) were the most prevalent. Cultures were requested from 655 patients, 40percent-flag-change of them having received antibiotics before cultures were taken, although this did not affected the percentages of positive cultures (P = 0.583). Conclusions: Pneumonia was the main cause of infection regardless of the site of acquisition. E. coli was the most prevalent germ, except in the pulmonary infections acquired in UCI in which S. aureus was the most prevalent.
