[An epidemic of legionellosis at a hotel at the Makarska seashore].

The paper describes the epidemic of Legionellosis that occurred among guests and employees of a hotel at the Makarska littoral in May 1988. According to the so far reported data in the medical literature that was the third epidemic in our country and all three of them occurred in the Dalmatian touristic area. In this epidemic, nine foreign tourists were registered ill with the clinical picture of Legionnaires' disease. Five patients required hospitalization. The disease could be serologically proved in 4 patients and Legionella pneumophila SG1 was isolated from samples of 2 patients and from sediment of the hot-water tank. Since the opening of the hotel until the end of May, 19 hotel employees developed a febrile illness of short duration. The disease was serologically proved in 7 of them. The morbidity rate in tourists was 2.5%, while it amounted to 7.1% in the hotel employees. The epidemic lasted for 16 days. The infection spread through the hot water, and antiepidemic measures were limited to its pasteurization and hyperchloridation. The chain of infection was broken off by the application of those measures.