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Carbapenem prescribing at a veterinary teaching hospital before an outbreak of carbapenem-resistant Escherichia coli.

OBJECTIVES
Carbapenems are a critically important class of antimicrobials used to treat infections caused by multi-drug-resistant bacteria. Following an outbreak of a carbapenemase (NDM-5)-producing strain of Escherichia coli at our veterinary institution, we opted to describe the use of carbapenems in our institution and the role that drug contraindications in patients may have played when culture and susceptibility testing identified alternative drug options.


MATERIALS AND METHODS
Medical record reviews of all cases where a carbapenem was prescribed were performed, and indications for use, timing of prescribing relative to culture and susceptibility reports, and alternative possible antimicrobial treatments were extracted. Contraindications to alternative antimicrobials were also documented.


RESULTS
Carbapenems were prescribed infrequently: from 2013 to 2018, they accounted for 0.47% of all antimicrobial prescriptions and were administered to 108 of 56,776 (0.2%) patients seen at our institution. They were prescribed empirically in slightly more than half of the patients (57.6%). Among cases where a carbapenem was prescribed after culture and susceptibility results were available, alternative antimicrobials could have been used in 68.3% of cases.


CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE
Variability in use of these drugs within an institution highlights the need to develop well-defined use guidelines, including when to use these drugs empirically and how to safely de-escalate or choose alternative drugs guided by culture and susceptibility results.