A simple and feasible antimicrobial stewardship program in a neonatal intensive care unit of a Japanese community hospital

Abstract Background Although tertiary hospitals have successfully introduced ASPs by antimicrobial stewardship teams, lots of community hospitals without pediatric infectious disease specialists have difficulty implementing ASP. We present a successful implementation of simple and feasible NICU antimicrobial stewardship program in a Japanese community hospital. Method We developed a protocol of antimicrobial treatment in our NICU department and have implemented the protocol from September 2017. The protocol consists of start and stop of criteria antimicrobial treatment, weekend report of blood culture result from microbiology department and stopping ordering antimicrobials beforehand for the next day. We compared days of therapy (DOT) during the post-implementation period (September 2017 to August 2018) with that of pre-implementation period (March 2013 to August 2017). Result In pre- and post-ASP implementation periods, 913 and 194 patients were analyzed. DOT was 175.1 and 41.6/1000 patient-days, respectively (p  S.aureus rates were significantly reduced in post-ASP period (31.1% vs 12.9%; p = 0.002). Conclusion This ASP program was easily implemented in a NICU department of a community hospital and significantly reduced antimicrobial prescription. This kind of simple protocol may be successfully scaled-up in resource limited community hospitals without no pediatric infectious disease specialists or antimicrobial stewardship team.