In order to investigate whether bacteremic cirrhosis patients generally have a more serious prognosis than non-bacteremic cirrhosis patients the survival rates of 43 bacteremic and 43 matched non-bacteremic cirrhosis patients were compared. No difference in survival existed between the two groups from the time of cirrhosis diagnosis. However, the survival rate of the bacteremic patients calculated from the onset of bacteremia was significantly shorter than the survival rate of the non-bacteremic cirrhosis patients calculated from the time of random selection (p less than 0.05). Thus the bacteremic patients at the time of bacteremia were generally in a later phase of their disease than the controls at the time of selection. Therefore, bacteremia when it occurs in cirrhosis is a severe prognostic sign, not because of its influence on survival but because of its occurrence late in the course of cirrhosis.