RESUMEN
Pneumonia is one of the leading causes of hospitalization and death among children in developing counties,, and mortality due to pneumoniae has been associated with S. pneumoniae infection. This investigation was designed to describe the antimicrobial susceptibility and serotype patterns of pneumococcal strains recovered from the blood of children with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) and to acess the clinical findings of pneumococcal bacteremic patients with pneumonia. In a 26 month prospective study, blood cultures were obtained as often as possible from children(<16 years of age) diagnosed with CAP in two emergency rooms. Antimicrobial drug susceptibility tests and serotyping were performed when pneumococcus was identified. We studied 3,431 cases and cultured blood samples from 65.5 percent of those. Pneumococcus was recovered from 0.8 percent of the blood samples. The differences in age, somnolence, wheezing and hospitalization among children with and without pneumococcal bacteremia were statistically significant. Pneumococcal bacteremia was age-related (mean 1.63 +1.55; median 0.92) and associated with somnolence and hospitalization among children with CAP. One strain was recovered from pleural fluid. Penicillin resistance was detected in 21.0 percent(4/19) of the strains at an intermediate level, whereas 63.0 percent of the strains were resistant to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. The most common serotypes were 14 and 6B, and these serotypes included the resistant strains. Eight of our 18 isolates from blood were of types included in the heptavalent conjugate pneumococcal vaccine, recently licensed in the USA.