[Bacteremia during the course of Salmonella gastroenteritis]

Abstract

Objective: Salmonella is the most frequent cause of bacterial acute gastroenteritis (AGE) in our setting. Usually its course is self-limited, but it sometimes can lead to bacteremia, principally in young infants and malnourished or immunosuppressed children. Bacteremia is less frequent in healthy people and in those over one year of age. This study was carried out to assess the incidence of bacteremia during Salmonella GE and to detect parameters that could lead to bacteremia.

Patients and methods: A retrospective study of positive stool cultures in our hospital between 1991 and 1993 was performed. Data about the epidemiology, clinical features cultures and analytical procedures were drawn from clinical records. Data were analyzed using the Mann-Whitney test and Fisher's exact test.

Results: During this period of time, 860 cases of AGE were observed with 86 stool cultures positive for Salmonella (10%). Six of them also had positive blood cultures (7%). All 6 patients with bacteremia were healthy previously and five were over 12 months old. The outcome was good in all cases, without focalizations of the bacteremia. We could not detect any differences between patients with positive blood cultures and the patients without bacteremia.

Conclusions: Bacteremia during Salmonella AGE is not infrequent and is not limited to young infants or patients with underlying diseases. None of the parameters analyzed were useful in predicting the possibility of bacteremia.