Study of the bacterial agents of blood stream infection in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

I read with interest the article “Study of the bacterial agents in nosocomial and acquired infections based on the blood culture in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of Hospital, North East of Iran” by NaderiNasab et al, recently published in Saudi Medical Journal1 and have a few comments. The authors presented a study of the bacterial agents in bloodstream infections among hospitalized patients in the NICU. The authors used the term “acquired infection”; however, this term is obscure and is used apparently to denote community acquired infection to differentiate it from nosocomial infection.1 In addition, the authors did not define “acquired” and nosocomial infection. The definitions of blood stream infections are well established by the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions CDC.2 The study identified coagulase negative staphylococci (CoNS) as the predominant organism from both “acquired” and nosocomial infections.1 If the authors meant the community acquired infections by “acquired infections” then the presence of CoNS would merely represent a contamination rather than a true pathogen. Another possibility is misclassification of the patients, and placing them in a different group. In contrast, CoNS are the most commonly isolated organisms in Correspondence