Antimicrobial Stewardship Opportunities in Patients with Bacteremia Not Identified by BioFire FilmArray
Journal of Clinical Microbiology
P. Ny, A. Ozaki, J. Pallares, P. Nieberg, A. Wong-Beringer
2019
A subset of bacteremia cases are caused by organisms not detected by a rapid-diagnostics platform, BioFire blood culture identification (BCID), with unknown clinical characteristics and outcomes. Patients with ≥1 positive blood culture over a 15-month period were grouped by negative (NB-PC) versus positive (PB-PC) BioFire BCID results and compared with respect to demographics, infection characteristics, antibiotic therapy, and outcomes (length of hospital stay [LOS] and in-hospital mortality). Six percent of 1,044 positive blood cultures were NB-PC. The overall mean age was 65 ± 22 years, 54% of the patients were male, and most were admitted from home; fewer NB-PC had diabetes (19% versus 31%, P = 0.0469), although the intensive care unit admission data were similar. Anaerobes were identified in 57% of the bacteremia cases from the NB-PC group by conventional methods: Bacteroides spp. (30%), Clostridium (11%), and Fusobacterium spp. (8%). Final identification of the NB-PC pathogen was delayed by 2 days (P < 0.01) versus the PB-PC group. The sources of bacteremia were more frequently unknown for the NB-PC group (32% versus 11%, P < 0.01) and of pelvic origin (5% versus 0.1%, P < 0.01) compared to urine (31% versus 9%, P < 0.01) for the PB-PC patients. Fewer NB-PC patients received effective treatment before (68% versus 84%, P = 0.017) and after BCID results (82% versus 96%, P = 0.0048). The median LOS was similar (7 days), but more NB-PC patients died from infection (26% versus 8%, P < 0.01). Our findings affirm the need for the inclusion of anaerobes in BioFire BCID or other rapid diagnostic platforms to facilitate the prompt initiation of effective therapy for bacteremia.
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Utility of qSOFA score in identifying patients at risk for poor outcome in Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia
BMC Infectious Diseasesvolume
Emi Minejima, Vanessa Delayo, Mimi Lou, Pamela Ny, Paul Nieberg, Rosemary C. She & Annie Wong-Beringer
2019
The prognostic capability of the quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (qSOFA) bedside scoring tool is uncertain in non-ICU patients with sepsis due to bacteremia given the low number of patients previously evaluated.
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Leveraging Antimicrobial Stewardship in the Emergency Department to Improve the Quality of Urinary Tract Infection Management and Outcomes
Open Forum Infectious Diseases
Sarah C J Jorgensen, Samantha L Yeung, Mira Zurayk, Jill Terry, Maureen Dunn, Paul Nieberg, Jean Pallares, Annie Wong-Beringer
2018
The complex and fast-paced emergency department (ED) practice setting presents unique challenges that demand a tailored approach to antimicrobial stewardship. In this article, we describe the strategies applied by 1 institution’s antimicrobial stewardship program (ASP) that were successful in improving prescribing practices and outcomes for urinary tract infection (UTI) in the ED.
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Performance of Ceftolozane-Tazobactam Etest, MIC Test Strips, and Disk Diffusion Compared to Reference Broth Microdilution for β-Lactam-Resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa Isolates
Journal of Clinical Microbiology
Romney M. Humphries, Janet A. Hindler, Paul Magnano, Annie Wong-Beringer, Robert Tibbetts, Shelley A. Miller
2018
The performance characteristics of the ceftolozane-tazobactam (C-T) Etest (bioMérieux, Marcy l'Etoile, France), MIC test strips (MTS; Liofilchem, Italy), and disk diffusion (Hardy, Santa Ana, CA) were evaluated for a collection of 308 beta-lactam-resistant isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa recovered from three institutions in Los Angeles, CA. Reference testing was performed by the reference broth microdilution (rBMD) method. MIC and disk results were interpreted using Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute breakpoints. Overall, 72.5% of the isolates were susceptible to C-T by rBMD. Etest and disk diffusion demonstrated acceptable performance, whereas MTS yielded a greater than acceptable percentage of minor errors. Categorical agreement was 96.8% for Etest, 87.0% for MTS, and 92.9% for disk diffusion. No very major errors were observed by any test, and no major errors (ME) were observed by Etest or disk diffusion. Two ME (0.9% of susceptible isolates) were observed by MTS. The incidence of minor errors was 3.2%, 12.3%, and 7.1% for Etest, MTS, and disk diffusion, respectively. Essential agreement (EA) for Etest was excellent, at 97.7%, whereas the MICs obtained by MTS tended to be 1 to 2 dilutions higher than those obtained by rBMD, with an EA of 87.0%.
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Risk factors for early return visits to the emergency department in patients with urinary tract infection
The American Journal of Emergency Medicine
Sarah Jorgensen, Mira Zurayk, Samantha Yeung, Jill Terry, Maureen Dunn, Paul Nieberg, Annie Wong-Beringer
2018
Optimal management of urinary tract infections (UTIs) in the emergency department (ED) is challenging due to high patient turnover, decreased continuity of care, and treatment decisions made in the absence of microbiologic data. We sought to identify risk factors for return visits in ED patients treated for UTI.
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