December 13, 2020
2 min learn
Supply/Disclosures
Disclosures:
Claeys serving as a speaker for Luminex Company and GenMark Diagnostics.
A survey investigating diagnostic and antimicrobial stewardship practices confirmed that almost all establishments used speedy respiratory panels. Nonetheless, stewardship practices incorporating these checks had been unusual, researchers stated.
“Though there’s widespread implementation of molecular respiratory diagnostic testing, and there’s literature that demonstrates its skill to help in decreasing pointless antibiotic use, how impactful these instruments actually are and the way they’re being utilized by antimicrobial stewardship applications (ASPs) hasn’t been totally elucidated,” Kimberly C. Claeys, PharmD, assistant professor on the College of Maryland College of Pharmacy, informed Healio. “We needed to achieve out to our colleagues throughout North America to ask them what their scientific microbiology laboratories and ASPs have executed to finest incorporate these instruments into scientific apply to optimize antibiotic use.”

Supply: Claeys KC, et al. Infect Management Hosp Epidemiol. 2020;doi:10.1017/ice.2020.1328.
Claeys and colleagues developed a 32-item survey to discover diagnostic and ASP practices associated to speedy molecular respiratory diagnostics. In accordance with the research, the survey recorded demographic traits of establishments, their laboratory practices pertaining to specimen assortment and respiratory viral testing, ASP practices and perceived influence on antibiotic use. Survey responses had been collected between December 2019 and March 2020.
The survey was accomplished by 37 of 70 eligible members of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology Analysis Community.
Amongst respondents, 13 (35.1%) had been primarily concerned in ASP actions, 13 (35.1%) in consultative infectious illnesses providers (n = 13; 35.1%) and 11 (29.8%) in an infection prevention actions (n = 11; 29.8%).
In accordance with the research, 94.5% of establishments (n = 35) reported utilizing a respiratory viral panel (RVP) assay, however few reported the provision of an expanded pneumonia panel (n = 7; 18.9%), with the BioFire FilmArray RVP being essentially the most generally used (n = 25; 71.5%). Moreover, 60% of respondents (n = 21) reported that their establishment had printed steering about when to order RVP testing, and 54% (n = 19) reported restrictions to restrict inappropriate testing. Amongst these establishments, 10 (53%) indicated that restrictions had been primarily based on pattern kind and 7 (37%) reported restrictions designed to cut back duplicate testing.
The researchers additionally discovered extra concerning the establishments’ ASP practices. In accordance with the research, lower than half of those establishments (n = 15; 42.9%) reported that they reviewed RVP outcomes as a part of routine ASP actions, whereas solely 5 (14.3%) indicated that they carry out real-time audit and suggestions primarily based on RVP outcomes. Moreover, lower than half of the establishments (n = 15; 42.9%) reported ASP-led academic actions associated to acceptable interpretation of RVPs.
“Though this research was executed previous to the COVID-19 pandemic, we noticed that use of molecular respiratory diagnostic testing was frequent. This research actually highlights, nevertheless, the necessity to higher incorporate these instruments into our ASPs and assess their influence on our ASP metrics regionally,” Claeys stated. “We have now executed a superb job working with our scientific microbiology colleagues to optimize molecular diagnostics in bloodstream infections, however we nonetheless have work to do in different areas of diagnostic and antimicrobial stewardship.”