Microbiology Data
Numbers of positive sputum culture results varied among patients.Streptococcus pneumoniae was the most commonly isolated pathogen
(65% of sputum specimens resulted in at least one isolation), followed
by Haemophilus influenzae and Staphylococcus aureus (Table
3). Pseudomonas aeruginosa was isolated at least once from sputum
only obtained from 5 different subjects (2 cases in AZM-treated group
and 3 in AZM-untreated group). Among patients with positive sputum
culture results, sputum of only 8 patients were retested, including 1
patient whose sputum yielded a new P. aeruginosa isolate and 2
patients whose sputum tested negative for S. pneumoniae . Due to
the small number of patients with repeated sputum culture test results,
the differences between AZM-treated and AZM-untreated groups were
insignificant.