A positive blood culture suggesting a remote infection source seeding onto the leads via the blood, either originating from the device pocket or from another remote site, was associated with the larger vegetations size, albeit only with marginal significance ( p = 0.08) ( Table 1 ).
By univariate analysis, we found that patients in group 1 were more often taking anticoagulation therapy ( p = 0.03, Phi (Phi coefficient) = −0.5, OR [odds ratio] 0.071) and had signs of local pocket infection ( p = 0.02, Phi = −0.52, OR 0.059) while significantly more patients in group 2 had diabetes ( p = 0.08, Phi = 0.566, OR 15); moreover the patients in group 2 showed a trend toward a more frequent positive blood culture ( p = 0.08, Phi = 0.39, OR 5.8) and infection with coagulase negative staphylococci ( p = 0.06, Phi = 0.46, OR 8.3).
Finally, this study is in agreement with and corroborates the few other studies [ 12 , 13 ] reporting the association of pocket device infection with small mass size, the negative correlation of age with mass size, and the positive relationship of the mass size with coagulase negative staphylococci, and in general with positive blood culture even though the later 2 variables were only marginally statistically significant in our study. 3.2.