• Clin Med (Lond) · Jan 2021

    Use of procalcitonin for antibiotic stewardship in patients with COVID-19: A quality improvement project in a district general hospital.

    • Christina Peters, Kelly Williams, Elena A Un, Louisa Little, Abeer Saad, Katherine Lendrum, Naomi Thompson, Nicholas D Weatherley, and Amanda Pegden.
    • Chesterfield Royal Hospital, Chesterfield, UK.
    • Clin Med (Lond). 2021 Jan 1; 21 (1): e71e76e71-e76.

    AbstractAntibiotic stewardship during the COVID-19 pandemic is an important part of a comprehensive strategy to improve patient outcomes and reduce long-term adverse effects secondary to rising antibiotic resistance. This report describes a quality improvement project which incorporates the use of procalcitonin (PCT) testing to rationalise antibiotic prescribing in patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 at Chesterfield Royal Hospital. Data were collected from 118 patients with a total of 127 PCT levels checked over a period of 20 days. Each PCT level was correlated with the subsequent antibiotic outcome as well as the result of the COVID-19 PCR swab. Results indicate that antibiotics were either never started or were stopped within 48 hours in 72% of COVID-confirmed cases with a PCT less than 0.25 μg/L. Our findings suggest that procalcitonin testing, when used in combination with thorough clinical assessment, is a safe, simple and sustainable way of reducing antibiotic use in COVID-19.© Royal College of Physicians 2021. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…