• J. Antimicrob. Chemother. · Nov 2020

    Antibiotic use in patients with COVID-19: a 'snapshot' Infectious Diseases International Research Initiative (ID-IRI) survey.

    • Bojana Beović, May Doušak, João Ferreira-Coimbra, Kristina Nadrah, Francesca Rubulotta, Mirko Belliato, Joana Berger-Estilita, Folusakin Ayoade, Jordi Rello, and Hakan Erdem.
    • University Medical Centre Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
    • J. Antimicrob. Chemother. 2020 Nov 1; 75 (11): 3386-3390.

    BackgroundAntibiotics may be indicated in patients with COVID-19 due to suspected or confirmed bacterial superinfection.ObjectivesTo investigate antibiotic prescribing practices in patients with COVID-19.MethodsWe performed an international web-based survey and investigated the pattern of antibiotic use as reported by physicians involved in treatment of COVID-19. SPSS Statistics version 25 was used for data analysis.ResultsThe survey was completed by 166 participants from 23 countries and 82 different hospitals. Local guidelines for antibiotic use in COVID-19 patients were reported by 61.8% (n = 102) of participants and for 82.9% (n = 136) they did not differ from local community-acquired pneumonia guidelines. Clinical presentation was recognized as the most important reason for the start of antibiotics (mean score = 4.07 and SD = 1.095 on grading scale from 1 to 5). When antibiotics were started, most respondents rated as the highest the need for coverage of atypical pathogens (mean score = 2.8 and SD = 0.99), followed by Staphylococcus aureus (mean score = 2.67 and SD = 1.05 on bi-modal scale, with values 1 and 2 for disagreement and values 3 and 4 for agreement). In the patients on the ward, 29.1% of respondents chose not to prescribe any antibiotic. Combination of β-lactams and macrolides or fluoroquinolones was reported by 52.4% (n = 87) of respondents. In patients in the ICU, piperacillin/tazobactam was the most commonly prescribed antibiotic. The mean reported duration of antibiotic treatment was 7.12 (SD = 2.44) days.ConclusionsThe study revealed widespread broad-spectrum antibiotic use in patients with COVID-19. Implementation of antimicrobial stewardship principles is warranted to mitigate the negative consequences of antibiotic therapy.© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…