Improving antibiotic use in the hospital: Focusing on positive blood cultures is an effective option

En complément du signalement donné par le laboratoire, l'utilisation d'une alerte informatisée permet à l'infectiologue d'intervenir utilement sur la prise en charge des hémocultures positives à l'hôpital. L'impact du conseil est plus important quand l'évaluation est restreinte aux services de médecine et chirurgie.What was already known
- Determination of the appropriate therapy for bloodstream infections is one of the most common difficulties encountered by physicians in clinical practice.
- Studies have shown that infectious disease physician advices optimized patient care and decreased antibiotic and side effect related costs.
- The importance of close coordination between the microbiology laboratory and the infectious disease physician has been emphasized, and it has been shown that alert reports associated with clinical advice should complement traditional microbiological reports for patients with bloodstream infections.What this article adds
- A systematic evaluation of positive blood cultures could usefully be performed by a single infectious disease physician using a computer-generated alert, in addition to the early report of microbiological information by the laboratory.
- Despite limited resources, the infectious disease physician was able to counsel the attending physicians with a high rate of compliance, suggesting that this strategy may be implemented successfully in many hospitals.