Review of antibiotic drug use in a surgical ICU: management with a patient data management system for additional outcome analysis in patients staying more than 24 hours.

BACKGROUND

A number of developments have been made in computerized patient data management systems (PDMSs), making them of interest to medical and nursing staff as a means of improving patient care.

OBJECTIVES

The aim of this study was to assess the capability of a PDMS to record and provide drug-administration data and to investigate whether the PDMS may be used as a means of support for clinical audits and quality control. Furthermore, we assessed whether antibiotic therapy as a surrogate for infections correlates with hospital mortality in patients staying >24 hours in a surgical intensive care unit (SICU).

METHODS

Because of its medical and economic importance in ICU treatment, we chose to use the field of antibiotic therapy as an example. A PDMS was used in a 14-bed SICU (Department of Anesthesiology, Intensive Care Medicine, and Pain Therapy, University Hospital Giessen, Giessen, Germany) to record relevant patient data, including therapeutic, diagnostic, and nursing actions. During a 15-month period (April 1, 2000 to June 30, 2001), antibiotic drug therapy was electronically analyzed and presented using the anatomic therapeutic chemical (ATC) category for antibacterials (ATC group, J01) with daily defined doses. Furthermore, the correlation of antibiotic therapy with patient outcome (hospital mortality) was tested using logistic regression analysis.

RESULTS

A total of 2053 patients were treated in the SICU. Of these, 58.0% (1190 patients) received antibiotics (4479 treatment days; 13,145 single doses). Cephalosporins (ATC category, J01DA) were used most frequently (1785 treatment days [39.9% of treatment days]), followed by combinations of penicillins with beta-lactam inhibitors (ATC category, J01CR; 1478 treatment days [33.0%]) and imidazole derivatives (ATC category, J01XD; 667 treatment days [14.9%]). The antibiotic therapy lasted <3 days in 65.6% of cases. In 13.8% of cases, the treatment lasted >1 week. A total of 36.7% of cases were treated with only 1 antibiotic agent, 14.1% were given a combination of 2, and 7.2% were given a combination of > or =3 antibiotic agents. Seven hundred twenty-six patients remained in the SICU for >24 hours; 143 (19.7%) died during their hospital stay; 110 (15.2%) in the SICU. The duration of antibiotic therapy (odds ratio [OR], 1.46) and number of different antibiotic drugs used (OR, 2.15) significantly correlated with hospital mortality.

CONCLUSIONS

Antibiotic therapy in a SICU can be assessed and analyzed in detail using a PDMS. Furthermore, in this study, the duration of antibiotic therapy and the number of antibiotic agents used correlated with hospital mortality. In further developing PDMSs, it is important for quality-assurance purposes to document the reasons for giving antibiotics and for changing prescriptions. It would also be helpful to integrate certain therapy standards and reminder functions for the duration of therapy in the PDMS.