Table 3.

Sputum etiology among the three patients’ groups (n = 223)

Sputum pathogenic culture	A	B	C	P
Pseudomonas aeruginosa	5 (27.8%)	18 (25.0%)	24 (27.9%)	0.913
Escherichia coli	3 (16.7%)	10 (13.9%)	13 (15.1%)	0.949
Klebsiella pneumoniae	2 (11.1%)	15 (20.8%)	11 (12.8%)	0.326
Staphylococcus aureus	4 (22.2%)	13 (18.1%)	20 (23.3%)	0.720
Staphylococcus epidermidis	1 (5.6%)	8 (11.1%)	8 (9.3%)	0.766
Enterococcus	2 (11.1%)	5 (6.9%)	6 (7.0%)	0.816
Others	1 (5.6%)	3 (4.2%)	4 (4.7%)	0.966
Total number of positive cases	18 (66.7%)	72 (82.8%)	86 (78.9%)	0.201

Footnote. The data are expressed as the"number of cases (percentage of positive cases in the group)". A chi-square test (χ2 test) was used, with p values > 0.05 indicating that there was no significant difference