Antimicrobial stewardship effectiveness on rationalizing the use of last line of antibiotics in a short period with limited human resources: a single centre cohort study

Antibiotics reserve (ARs) are given as a last line of treatment when other antibiotics are no longer effective. Rising threat of antimicrobial resistance makes growing use of ARs a real problem to patient safety. A single centre interventional cohort study was conducted in order to measure impact on clinical outcomes of A-team programme with limited human resources in a short period. A-team programme started on 01. September 2017. In 3 months preintervention and 3 months intervention period, from 3038 and 3156 hospitalized adult patients, 249 (59% of them were male, median age = 69 years) and 96 (51% of them were male, median age = 70 years) received parenteral ARs. Total duration of hospitalization of patients on AR was reduced from 28 to 17 days of hospitalization on 100 patient-days (OR = 1.92; 95% CI 1.83–2.01; p < 0.001) with no statistical significant difference in rehospitalisation due to infection of patients that were treated with ARs within 2 months after discharge. Despite short period of time and limited human resources, A-team restrictive interventions rationalised parenteral AR use and led to positive impact on clinical outcomes. These results could help our and other A-teams in similar situation in continuing with the programme to bring more evidence.