200 Chapter 9 Fig. 2. Survival in female and male patients with Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia. Kaplan-Meier survival curve with proportional cumulative survival of females and males with S. aureus bacteraemia. Discussion The interaction between female sex and mortality in SAB and bloodstream infections in general has been controversial for decades [6,17]. The historical tendency to include fewer female patients in scientific studies may have contributed to the knowledge gap concerning sex-specific outcomes in SAB [18]. Some, but not all [19,20], studies have reported higher rates of mortality in females with hospital-acquired bloodstream infection [21], severe sepsis [22,23] and endocarditis [24]. The previous literature on sex differences in patients with SAB is similarly contradictory (Table 3). For example, although studies from Israel [7] and Denmark [3] reported higher mortality in female patients with SAB, similar publications from Finland [9] and Korea [8] found no overall mortality difference in patients with SAB. Our study adds to this ongoing discussion by reporting on a large, prospective cohort of U.S. patients with a high prevalence of recognized risk factors for poor outcome in SAB [15,25-27].
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