Antibiotic

A pharmacist-led antibiotic timeout was found to be feasible and well accepted by hospital teams. However, it did not change overall antibiotic use, researchers reported in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.

Higher cumulative exposure to systemic antibiotic therapy may be associated with higher risk for the development of inflammatory bowel disease, according to research published in Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology.

The CDC recently reported that more than 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections occur in the United States every year, and 50% of the antibiotic-resistant threats are gram-negative bacteria.

Artificial intelligence can help predict the chance of resistant organisms appearing in sputum cultures in the ER, helping to guide therapy, according to findings presented during the ASM Microbe virtual meeting.

The consumption of a group of first- and second-line antibiotics with a higher potential for resistance increased by approximately 91% between 2000 and 2015, according to a study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

Extending oral antibiotics use to 7 days postoperatively in patients at high risk for prosthetic joint infection was effective at reducing infection rates, findings of a retrospective study of prospectively collected data showed.

A quality improvement intervention led to a 7% sustained reduction in antibiotic prescribing for pediatric acute respiratory tract infections at nearly two dozen U.S. practices, researchers reported in Pediatrics.

A study published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology reported “widespread” use of empirical antibiotics for patients with COVID-19 at a New York hospital, and that coinfections among COVID-19 patients were uncommon.

Treatment opportunities for novel gram-negative antibiotics are relatively infrequent in hospitals — representing just 39 to 138 days of therapy per 10,000 encounters, according to a study.

Nearly 20% of patients treated for pneumonia did not display pneumonia symptoms on their first day of treatment, but antibiotics were used for 3 days or more after symptoms ceased in one-third of patients, according to a large cohort study.