Epidemiologic investigations
Cases of septic abortion were not investigated because the symptoms had
appeared before hospitalization and, as such, were assumed to be
community-acquired. Regarding post-natal cases subtypes: identical
emm-type GAS infection was obtained from throat swabs of all members of
the hospital staff with direct patient contact in seven cases. The
dominant emm strains that were isolated were: emm 14.3 (n = 3),
emm 22 (n = 3), emm 75 (n = 4), and emm 11 (n = 3)
and all of the affected patients were admitted to the ICU (Table 4).
Figure 1 represents the multi-year analysis of infections in the medical
centre. Five infections were deemed to be acquired from the hospital
staff, and three of them that occurred in March 2008 were identified as
having the same nidus of infection. Therefore, the overall rate of a
proven hospital personal associated GAS infection was 8.7%.