Impact and quality of antimicrobial use in a referral pediatric intensive care unit.

INTRODUCTION:We aimed to describe antimicrobial use (AU) and quality of prescriptions (QP) in a 28-bed medical-surgical PICU of a European referral children's hospital during 2019. METHODS:AU data were expressed as days-of-therapy (DOT) over 100 days-present (DP) and as length-of-treatment (LOT). QP was based on monthly cross-sectional point-prevalence surveys. Length-of-stay (LOS), readmission rates (RR), and mortality rates (MR) were also collected. RESULTS:PICU AU accounted for 13.5% of the global hospital AU; the median PICU density of AU was 1.4 (IQR 1.3-1.5) times higher than that of the rest of the hospital areas. Antibacterials represented 88.5% of the overall AU, cefazolin and amoxicillin-clavulanate being the most used drugs. A high QP rate was observed (149/168 optimal, 88.9%), with room for improvement in prophylactic regimens and de-escalation of broad-spectrum regimens. LOT, LOS, RR, and MR remained stable. CONCLUSIONS:PICU AU represented a major portion of the global hospital AU. Despite high QP rates, prophylactic and broad-spectrum antibiotic regimens were optimizable.