We described the trends of drug-resistant organisms isolated in blood cultures from patients detected in a teaching hospital from 1995 to 2000. We found an increase in the number of clinical isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Enterobacter spp, Serratia spp, Staphylococcus aureus, S. epidermidis and Enterococcus spp, resistant to antibiotics commonly used to treat infections caused by these organisms. The frequency of gram-negative bacilli resistant to third-generation cephalosporins and quinolones increased during the period of study, and in 2000 more than 20% of the isolates were resistant. In contrast, the frequency of resistance to aminoglycosides and carbapenems was less than 20%. The frequency of resistant staphylococci increased exuberantly fifty fold to quinolones and five fold to oxacillin during the study period, therefore in 2000, 26.1% of S. aureus isolates and 61% of S. epidermidis were resistant to oxacillin. The frequency of resistant enterococci also increased, and in 2000, 50% were resistant to ampicillin, and 37.5% to gentamicin. The increase of drug resistant organisms isolated in blood had a direct impact in the empirical treatment of severely infected patients in our hospital. It is important to continuously supervise antibiotic use, and to adopt more strict control measures to decrease the frequency of infections caused by drug resistant organisms.