Rapid Spreading And Development Of Enterococci Can Lead To Development Of

Rapid spreading and development of Enterococci can lead to development of multidrug-resistant strains of Enterococci (Gilmore, 2002). Most researchers suggest that control measures for restricting the spread of Enterococci have to be continuous and should involve a multidisciplinary task force including hospital epidemiologists, pharmacists, therapeutic committee members, hospital and medical staff and infection control committee members. We have given a chart on the different isolates of Enterococci obtained.
Comparative Chart of E.faecalis and E.faecium instances 1994-1999. Demographic data by Fortun et al 2002.

Number of blood culture isolates of E. faecalis (black bars), E. faecium (hatched bars) and other enterococci (white bars) during the period 19941999 in Ramón y Cajal Hospital.

In this section, we aimed to give a general introduction to Enterococci and the prevalence of E. faecalis and E. faecium bacterial strains. We also discussed the importance of vancomycin resistant Enterococci or VRE in medical research as vancomycin seems to be the last and strongest available alternative and the most effective for treatment of enterococcal infection. Considering this, any vancomycin resistance is extremely important clinically as this throws a new challenge in eradicating and treatment of enterococcal infections that are not only increasing in distribution and numbers but by showing resistance to nearly all antibiotics, are almost impossible to treat. We now move on to more detailed discussions of Enterococci and multidrug resistant strains as also different types of resistance to antibiotics, prevalence of enterococcal infections, case studies and the various phenotypes of vancomycin resistant Enterococci that include VanA and VanB among other varieties.
Chapter2: Bacterial Resistance to Antibiotics

Enterococci are associated with diseases including infection of the blood stream that is bacteremia, diseases of the heart valves or endocarditis and diseases of the brain or meningitis that can occur in severely ill patients and these strains of bacteria frequently colonize open wounds, surgical wounds, urinary tracts, intestinal regions and skin ulcers. In these conditions, bacteria usually develop from lesions. Enterococci are the most antibiotic resistant bacterial strain although minor infections can be treated using tetracyclines, penicillin or ciprofloxacin. However, only strong penicillin such as ampicillin and vancomycin given by injections are effective against severe bacterial infections such as endocarditis or meningitis. Serious infections require the administration of simultaneous doses of several strong antibiotics.
The antibiotics were mainly considered as potentially effective for treatment of bacterial infections and until recently the resistant strains of Enterococci was never a challenge.