A new study has revealed that if a patient contracts an infection while in the hospital, each day of hospitalization increases by 1 percent the likelihood that the infection will be multidrug-resistant.
Researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina gathered and analyzed historical data from 949 documented cases of Gram-negative infection at their academic medical center.
The study showed that in the first few days of hospitalization the percentage of infections associated with Gram-negative bacteria classified as multidrug-resistant was about 20 percent and rose fairly steadily until four or five days, then jumped dramatically, peaking at over 35 percent at 10 days.