The aim of this work was to study the prevalence of bacterial infections in hospitalized patients with liver cirrhosis and to compare clinical, bacteriological and evolution features of patients with (group 1) and without bacterial infections (group 2). One hundred thirty two hospitalized patients with liver cirrhosis were prospectively studied and 61 episodes of bacterial infections were diagnosed in 52 (27 spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (44.3%), 16 urinary tract infections (26.2%), 10 pneumonias (16.4%), 3 spontaneous bacteremias (4.9%9, and 5 miscellaneous infections (8.2%)). Twenty six percent of infections were nosocomial. Child-Pugh score was 12 +/- 2 in group 1 vs 10 +/- 2 in group 2 (p = 0.047). Sixty five percent of identified microorganisms were gram negative and 61.5% of these were E. coli. Hospital mortality of group 1 was 29% and that of group 2 was 9% (p = 0.002). It is concluded that there is a high prevalence of bacterial infections in hospitalized cirrhotic patients, that is associated to a high mortality.