Impact of a clinical microbiology-intensive care consulting program in a cardiothoracic intensive care unit

A preintervention-postintervention study was carried out over a 4-year period to assess the impact of an antimicrobial stewardship intervention, based on clinical microbiologist ward rounds (clinical microbiology-intensive care partnership [CMICP]), at a cardiothoracic intensive care unit. Comparison of clinical data for 37 patients with diagnosis of bacteremia (18 from preintervention period, 19 from post-intervention period) revealed that CMICP implementation resulted in (1) significant increase of appropriate empirical treatments (+34%, P = .029), compliance with guidelines (+28%, P = .019), and number of de-escalations (+42%, P = .032); and (2) decrease (average = 2.5 days) in time to optimization of antimicrobial therapy and levofloxacin (Delta 2009-2012 = -74 defined daily dose [DDD]/1,000 bed days) and teicoplanin (Delta 2009-2012 = -28 DDD/1,000 bed days) use. Copyright (C) 2015 by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.