• Masaharu Aga, Toru Naganuma, Yusuke Ohashi, Hiroki Matsuzawa, Suguru Matsuzaka, Ivor Cammack, Gen Yamada, and Yoshimoto Serizawa.
• Department of General Internal Medicine and Infectious Disease, Teine Keijinkai Hospital, 12-1-40, Maeda 1-jo, Sapporo Shi Teine Ku, Hokkaido, 006-0811, Japan. me19003@s.okayama-u.ac.jp.
• Intern Emerg Med. 2021 Oct 1; 16 (7): 1841-1848.

BackgroundPatients with aspiration pneumonitis often receive empiric antibiotic therapy despite it being due to a non-infectious, inflammatory response.ObjectiveTo study the benefits of early antibiotic therapy in patients with suspected aspiration pneumonitis in an acute care hospital.DesignRetrospective cohort study using electronic medical records from Teine Keijinkai Hospital.ParticipantsAdults aged over 18 years admitted with a diagnosis of aspiration pneumonitis to the Department of General Internal Medicine or Emergency Department between January 1, 2008, and May 31, 2019. A diagnosis of aspiration pneumonitis was defined as a documented macro-aspiration event and a chest radiograph demonstrating new radiographic infiltrates.Main MeasuresPatients were classified into the "early antibiotic treatment" group and the "no or late treatment" group depending on whether they received antibiotic therapy for respiratory bacterial pathogens within 8 h of arrival. The primary outcome was in-hospital all-cause mortality. Secondary outcomes included length of hospital stay, antibiotic-free days, duration of fever, readmission within one month, and incidence of complications.Key ResultsOf the 146 patients enrolled, 52 (35.6%) did not receive early antibiotic therapy, while the remaining 94 (64.4%) did. There was no difference in in-hospital mortality rates between the groups after adjustment for potential confounding variables using Cox proportional hazards analysis (hazard ratio 2.78; 95% confidence interval, 0.57-13.50, p = 0.20). Patients in the no or late treatment group had more antibiotic-free days (p < 0.001) and a shorter length of hospital stay among survivors (p = 0.040) than did those in the early antibiotic treatment group. There were no statistically significant differences between the groups with respect to other secondary outcomes.ConclusionsEarly antibiotic therapy for acute aspiration pneumonitis was not associated with in-hospital mortality, but was associated with a longer hospital stay and prolonged use of antibiotics.© 2021. Società Italiana di Medicina Interna (SIMI).

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