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.