Extracts, citations and a comment from me below.
'Although low rates of bacterial infections have frequently been reported in patients hospitalised with COVID-19, excessive use of antibiotics has also been described in this population since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic...
'This is the first randomised trial assessing the efficacy and safety of an antimicrobial stewardship intervention in patients hospitalised with COVID-19, and provides a higher-than-usual certainty of evidence that reducing antibiotic use in such patients is possible without substantial harm. Despite the mentioned limitations, this message remains crucial in light of the discrepancy observed between the high frequency of patients who were treated with antibiotics (53%) and the low frequency of culture-confirmed bacterial infections (4%)'
CITATION: Too many antibiotics for patients with COVID-19 despite low bacterial infections
Daniele Roberto Giacobb, Matteo Bassetti
Lancet Infect Dis.
Published:January 27, 2023 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(22)00866-0
CITATION: Chen JZ et al. Efficacy and safety of antimicrobial stewardship prospective audit and feedback in patients hospitalised with COVID-19 (COVASP): a pragmatic, cluster-randomised, non-inferiority trial.
Lancet Infect Dis. 2023; (published online Jan 27.)
https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(22)00832-5
COMMENT (NPW): These findings are important but how important is overuse of antibiotics in patients with (suspected) COVID-19 relative to overuse of antibiotics in general practice, as a driver of antibiotic resistance?
The HIFA systematic review on 'How primary healthcare workers obtain information during consultations to aid safe prescribing in low-income and lower middle-income countries' demonstrated 'a lack of up-to-date and relevant medicine information in low and lower middle-income settings'. The contribution of lack of access to reliable information on antibiotics, for both health workers and citizens, is likely to be massive, and yet this issue remains neglected and many health workers only have access to information from big pharma, whose main aim is to get health workers to prescribe even more.
Every prescriber and every user of medicines should have access to reliable, independent information on medicines, in a format and language they can understand, to guide their decision-making.
Best wishes, Neil
Joint Coordinator HIFA Project on Information for Prescribers and Users of Medicines http://www.hifa.org/projects/prescribers-and-users-medicines
Dr Neil Pakenham-Walsh, HIFA Coordinator
Healthcare Information For All
Global Healthcare Information Network
Working in Official Relations with the World Health Organization
20,000 members, 400 supporting organisations, 180 countries, 6 forums, 4 languages
www.hifa.org neil@hifa.org
