TABLE 1.

Characteristics of patients with GNBI receiving active versus inactive empiric therapy^a

Patient characteristic	No. (%) of patients with characteristic		P valueb
	Active empiric therapy (n = 759)	Inactive empiric therapy (n = 125)
Male sex	397 (52.3)	58 (46.4)	0.25
Diagnosis code
Transplant	38 (5.0)	9 (7.2)	0.31
Cancer	125 (16.5)	17 (13.6)	0.42
HIVc	11 (1.4)	1 (0.8)	0.56
Organism
P. aeruginosa	94 (12.4)	38 (30.4)	<0.001
E. coli	321 (42.3)	33 (26.4)	0.001
K. pneumoniae	172 (22.7)	20 (16.0)	0.09
Other organism	172 (22.7)	34 (27.2)	0.27
Nosocomial infectiond	188 (24.8)	49 (39.2)	0.001
Charlson score
0	320 (42.2)	57 (45.6)	0.47
1 or 2	312 (41.4)	51 (40.8)	0.95
≥3	127 (16.7)	17 (13.6)	0.38
Surgical admission	483 (63.6)	81 (64.8)	0.80
Sepsis	199 (26.2)	18 (14.4)	0.004
ICU admissione	206 (27.1)	24 (19.2)	0.06

^aTotal of 884 admissions from 2001 to 2003. The mean age of patients with active empiric therapy was 57.3 years (standard deviation, 18.3 years), and the mean age of patients with inactive empiric therapy was 53.2 years (standard deviation, 18.1 years) (P value of 0.02, determined by a nonpaired t test).

^bDetermined by a χ² test.

^cHIV, human immunodeficiency virus.

^dDefined as a culture date greater than 2 days after the hospital admission date.

^eDefined as ICU admission at the time of the index culture.