A 10-Year Survey of Antifungal Susceptibility of Candidemia Isolates from Intensive Care Unit Patients in Greece

This study retrospectively reviews the susceptibility of 135 baseline ICU candidemia isolates (from 1997 to 2007) to nine antifungals as determined by the AFST-EUCAST microdilution method and identifies the most frequent causative agents of confirmed point-source candidemia outbreaks in local intensive care units. A minority of common and rare Candida species displayed decreased susceptibility to all antifungals. Candidemia occurs in up to 10 % of the patients in intensive care units (ICU), leading to prolonged use of mechanical ven-tilation and duration of hospital stay (5, 7, 8, 14, 16). As the choice of antifungals for treating candidemia in critically ill patients depends on knowledge of the local epidemiology, this study reviews the susceptibility of ICU candidemia strains iso-lated from 1997 to 2007 and archived in the UOA/HCPF1 collection (World Data Centre of Microorganisms, WDCM92