Staphylococcal dissemination and sepsis in infants.

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was (i) to clarify the incidence of endemic pyogenic infections in infants, (ii) the relationship of these infections to the place of birth (i. e. hospital versus home), and to ‘nasal colonisation’ with Staphylococcus aureus, and (iii) the significance of this micro-organism in superficial pyogenic infections occurring during the first two months of life. The investigations were performed on infants born in the State Maternity Hospital for Jutland, and infants born at home in the city and county of Aarhus (population 215,900) during the last nine months of 1959. This study was preceded by a review of the records made out by the health visitors for infants born in the city and county of Aarhus in 1956 and 199 (Helms and Stenderup, 1961). These records contained detailed information of the clinical infections in which we were interested, and revealed that infections had occurred in 920 infants under two months of age out of a total of 6,383 or 14.4 per cent, (15.4 per cent of infants born in the Maternity Hospital and 13.5 per cent of those born at home). The two most frequent diagnoses were purulent conjunctivitis (5.5 per cent) and skin infections (8.0 per cent). Fig. I shows the 920 cases distributed according to the week of life in which the in