Cytomegalovirus antiviral stewardship in the COVID-19 Era: Increasing complexity of prophylaxis and treatment and potential mitigation strategies.

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is one of the most common and significant complications after solid organ transplant (SOT). Severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which causes the novel betacoronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19), has become the first global pandemic in 100 years. The world's attention has turned to address this unanticipated development; however, the viral infection that has long plagued outcomes after solid organ transplantation still requires vigilance. With physical distancing as the key intervention to reduce the healthcare burden, and the unease related to healthcare contact within the transplant population given the associated morbidity and mortality of COVID-19 in transplant recipients, providers have struggled to evaluate and streamline essential in-person healthcare contact, including laboratory visits. Owing to this, the COVID-19 pandemic has placed a significant strain on the delivery of CMV prophylaxis and treatment after solid organ transplantation. In this piece, we will describe issues our CMV antiviral stewardship service has encountered in the care of the transplant recipient with CMV during the this unprecedented time and share our expert opinion to approaches to providing optimal, evidenced based care during a pandemic associated with a seemingly unrelated viral infection.

Safety and Treatment Outcomes of Infants and Children Treated With Daptomycin: Six-Year Experience From a Pediatric Academic Medical Center.

Daptomycin is a common treatment for serious infections caused by gram-positive bacteria in adult patients; however, data regarding its safety and efficacy in the pediatric population are limited. This was a retrospective chart review of adverse reactions and treatment outcomes associated with daptomycin use in children <13 years old who received at least 1 dose of daptomycin. At least 1 dose of daptomycin was received by 147 patients. Seventy-two patients received daptomycin for 5 or more days. New-onset loose stools on daptomycin initiation were reported for 14 (9.5%) patients, elevations in creatine kinase in 3 (2%) patients, and elevated aspartate transaminase and alanine transaminase in 13 (8.8%) and 9 (6.1%) patients, respectively. Two patients (1.4%) had daptomycin discontinued due to specific concerns for adverse drug reactions. Daptomycin was found to be safe and effective in this pediatric cohort that included young children and infants with a variety of types and severities of infections.

Identifying medication misadventures: poor agreement among medical record, physician, nurse, and patient reports.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: To analyze and compare four different methods of detecting medication misadventures in order to determine the optimal system for reporting clinically observed medication misadventures. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTING: Forty-eight-bed general internal medicine inpatient ward at a large academic teaching hospital with a decentralized pharmacy system. PATIENTS: One hundred twenty-six patients (54% male, mean age 54 yrs) with 133 consecutive admissions to the ward (mean length of stay 7.8 days) over an 8-week period from December 2001-February 2002. INTERVENTION: Medication misadventures were detected by four methods: house staff (resident physicians) report during their morning conference, nursing report during shift change, patient report at the discharge interview, and standardized medical record review. All methods of reporting medication misadventures were compared with the hospital's existing electronic medication misadventure reporting system. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Overall, 63 patients (47% of 133 admissions) experienced at least one medication misadventure. Thirty-seven adverse drug events (ADEs) and 69 medication errors were observed over 1035 patient bed-days. Little overlap was noted among the four intervention methods, with nearly 80% of all 106 events detected by only a single method (medical record review 51% [54 events], patient interview 11% [12], house-staff report 9% [10], nurse report 8% [9]). Of the 37 ADEs, 6 (16%) were due to medication errors and 10 (27%) were preventable. Of five life-threatening ADEs, all were preventable, and all were reported in the medical record and the electronic reporting system; however, only two were reported by a nurse, two by a resident physician, and one by a patient. CONCLUSION: Little overlap was noted among the individual medication misadventure reporting methods, suggesting the need to use multiple complementary methods to identify medication misadventures in hospitalized patients. These findings have important implications for development of surveillance systems, design of prevention initiatives, and future medication safety research.