Jan-Willem H Dik, Ron Hendrix, Jerome R Lo-Ten-Foe, Kasper R Wilting, Prashant N Panday, Lisette E van Gemert-Pijnen, Annemarie M Leliveld, Job van der Palen, Alex W Friedrich, Bhanu Sinha
BACKGROUND: Antimicrobial resistance rates are increasing. This is, among others, caused by incorrect or inappropriate use of antimicrobials. To target this, a multidisciplinary antimicrobial stewardship-team (A-Team) was implemented at the University Medical Center Groningen on a urology ward. Goal of this study is to evaluate the clinical effects of the case-audits done by this team, looking at length of stay (LOS) and antimicrobial use. METHODS: Automatic e-mail alerts were sent after 48 h of consecutive antimicrobial use triggering the case-audits, consisting of an A-Team member visiting the ward, discussing the patient's therapy with the bed-side physician and together deciding on further treatment based on available diagnostics and guidelines...
2015: Frontiers in Microbiology