Clinical and microbiological characteristics of complicated intra-abdominal infectionin Colombia: a multicenter studyIntroduction: Complicated community-acquired intra-abdominal infections (CA-cIAI) are a common cause of acute abdomen.Objective: To identify the clinical and microbiology profile of CA-cIAI in four Colombian hospitals.Methods: This is a prospective, descriptive study, between 08-2012 and 09-2014, including patients with CA-cIAI ≥ 15 years.Data collected included: socio-demographic, clinical, diagnosis, and isolates of the first culture obtained aseptically during surgery with antimicrobial susceptibility.Results: 192 patients were included, 62% men, median age 47.3 years.Co-morbidities were present in 38.4%, 13% had been hospitalized in the previous year 13%, and 9.4% had received antibiotics in the last 6 months; 44.3% were admitted for appendicitis, 17.7% for peritonitis and 16.7% for bowel perforation.CA-cIAI were assessed as moderate in 64.1% of the cases and were treated with ampicillin/sulbactam (SAM) and ertapenem.In 70.8% of cases a bacteria was isolated: 65.1% were gramnegative rods (80.0%Escherichia coli, 44.8% of them susceptible to pipercillin/tazobactam, 65.7% to SAM; 11.2 % were K. pneumoniae, 85% was susceptible for SAM; 16.7% were grampositive cocci (28.1% Streptococci viridans group).The median hospital stay was 7 days and 15.1% died.Conclusions: E. coli, K. pneumoniae and S. viridans were the main organisms to consider in an empiric therapy for CA-cIAI and it is important to know the local epidemiology in order to choose the right antibiotic.