Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email
 |
Checking for direct PDF access through Ovid | |
Excerpt
Introduction: Antibiotic susceptibility biograms often guide the empirical treatment of suspected infections within a given hospital. Such biograms are generated based on the previous year's hospital microbiologic isolates. In a single surgical ICU (SICU), various ecological pressures may affect these sensitivity patterns. To monitor SICU patterns, microbiology data was collected over a six month period and was compared to the 1996 hospital generated biogram.
Methods: The Surgical Critical Care Database is a custom designed Windows compatible program. A Visual D-base template was created to allow input of patient data on a standard IBM compatible computer. Microbiology data for each patient included all cultures, culture dates, culture sites, organisms grown and sensitivity patterns. Biograms for a specific time period could be generated within the database.
Results: There were a total of 424 positive cultures obtained from the SICU from February through August 1997. We compared this data with the hospital's biogram currently in use. A comparison of isolate susceptibilities (% sensitive) is depicted below: Table 1
Conclusions: SICU susceptibility patterns may differ from those of the current hospital antibiotic biogram. As such, a specific SICU biogram may be valuable in guiding empiric antibiotic use. This SICU database has the potential to further explore complex ICU epidemiology.
