7-VINCut Antibiotic Stewardship Intervention to Decrease Duration of Antibiotic Treatment and Carbapenem Use in Surgery

"Hospitals were invited to form a surgical antibiotic stewardship program (ASP) with surgeons, pharmacists and infectious disease specialists. The interventional ASP relied on an audit and feedback strategy to issue recommendations aimed at reducing the duration of antibiotic treatment and the use of drugs with a particular impact on microbial ecology.~All patients hospitalized in surgical departments were prospectively analyzed weekly. A computerized alert allowed the ASP team to identify patients with antibiotic treatment \>7 days. The team meet to discuss the appropriateness of each antibiotic treatment, issuing a written recommendation for each patient. The intervention was performed only once for each patient, except if they had a new focus of infection. The recommendations available for prolonged treatments were: withdraw, maintain, de-escalate, broaden, change route, optimize dose, no recommendation. Adherence to the recommendations was recorded 48 hours later by the ASP team."