Relationship between various definitions of prior antibiotic exposure and piperacillin-tazobactam resistance among patients with respiratory tract infections caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Contemporary literature lacks a definition of prior antibiotic exposure which captures all patients at risk of developing piperacillin-tazobactam-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PTR-PA). The results indicated that individual antibiotics that are associated with PTR-PA differ depending on the definition of prior antibiotic exposure utilized. When the specific antibiotic used was replaced by the number of prior exposures, the number of exposures was the only variable associated with an increased risk of antibiotic resistance at each time threshold.