Health Care–Associated Bloodstream Infections in Adults: A Reason To Change the Accepted Definition of Community-Acquired Infections

Abstract

Health care-associated bloodstream infections are similar to nosocomial infections in terms of frequency of various comorbid conditions, source of infection, pathogens and their susceptibility patterns, and mortality rate at follow-up. A separate category for health care-associated bloodstream infections is justified, and this new category will have obvious implications for choices about empirical therapy and infection-control surveillance.