A multicentre stewardship initiative to decrease excessive duration of antibiotic therapy for the treatment of community-acquired pneumonia.

Background: The increased emphasis on pneumonia-related performance measures and patient outcomes has led hospitals to implement multifaceted approaches to quickly identify patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP), start timely therapy and reduce readmission. However, there has been minimal focus on duration of therapy (DOT) and patients often receive prolonged antibiotic courses. The IDSA and American Thoracic Society (IDSA/ATS) CAP guidelines recommend 5 days of therapy for clinically stable patients that quickly defervesce and stewardship teams are well positioned to influence prescribing practices. Objectives: Determine the impact of a prospective stewardship intervention on total antibiotic DOT and associated clinical outcomes in hospitalized patients with CAP. Methods: This multicentre, quasi-experimental study evaluated three concurrent interventions over a 6 month period to promote appropriate DOT. All centres updated institutional CAP guidelines to promote IDSA/ATS-concordant DOT, provided education and conducted daily audit and feedback with intervention to provide patient-specific DOT recommendations. Results: A total of 600 patients with CAP were included (307 in the historical control group and 293 in the stewardship intervention group). The stewardship intervention increased compliance with DOT recommendations (42% versus 5.6%, P < 0.001) and reduced the median DOT per patient (6 versus 9 days, P < 0.001). Clinical outcomes, including mortality, readmission with pneumonia, presentation to the emergency centre/clinic with pneumonia and incidence of Clostridium difficile infection within 30 days of discharge, were not different between groups. Conclusions: This multicentre evaluation of a stewardship intervention in hospitalized CAP patients reduced the total antibiotic DOT and increased guideline-concordant DOT without adversely affecting patient outcomes.

Preoperative Management of Medications for Rheumatologic and HIV Diseases: Society for Perioperative Assessment and Quality Improvement (SPAQI) Consensus Statement.

Perioperative medical management is challenging because of the rising complexity of patients presenting for surgical procedures. A key part of preoperative optimization is appropriate management of long-term medications, yet guidelines and consensus statements for perioperative medication management are lacking. Available resources use recommendations derived from individual studies and do not include a multidisciplinary focus on formal consensus. The Society for Perioperative Assessment and Quality Improvement identified a lack of authoritative clinical guidance as an opportunity to use its multidisciplinary membership to improve evidence-based perioperative care. The Society for Perioperative Assessment and Quality Improvement seeks to provide guidance on perioperative medication management that synthesizes available literature with expert consensus. The aim of this consensus statement is to provide practical guidance on the preoperative management of immunosuppressive, biologic, antiretroviral, and anti-inflammatory medications. A panel of experts including hospitalists, anesthesiologists, internal medicine physicians, infectious disease specialists, and rheumatologists was appointed to identify the common medications in each of these categories. The authors then used a modified Delphi process to critically review the literature and to generate consensus recommendations.