Outbreak of ceftazidime-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae in a pediatric hospital in Warsaw, Poland: clonal spread of the TEM-47 extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)-producing strain and transfer of a plasmid carrying the SHV-5-like ESBL-encoding gene.

In 1996 a large, 300-bed pediatric hospital in Warsaw, Poland, started a program of monitoring infections caused by extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)-producing microorganisms. Over the first 3-month period eight Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates were identified as being resistant to ceftazidime. Six of these were found to produce the TEM-47 ESBL, which we first described in a K. pneumoniae strain recovered a year before in a pediatric hospital in Lódź, Poland, which is 140 km from Warsaw. Typing results revealed a very close relatedness among all these isolates, which suggested that the clonal outbreak in Warsaw was caused by a strain possibly imported from Lódź. The remaining two isolates expressed the SHV-5-like ESBL, which resulted from the horizontal transfer of a plasmid carrying the blaSHV gene between nonrelated strains. The data presented here exemplify the complexity of the epidemiological situation concerning ESBL producers typical for large Polish hospitals, in which no ESBL-monitoring programs were in place prior to 1995.