Adherence to and clinical utility of “quality indicators” for Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia: a retrospective, multicenter study

We aimed to improve the prognosis, treatment, and management of Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia (SAB) by evaluating the association between adherence to quality indicators (QIs) and clinical outcomes in patients with their clinical outcomes. We retrospectively collected clinical and microbiological data on hospitalized patients with SAB from 14 hospitals (three with > 600, two with 401–600, five with 201–400, and four with ≤ 200 beds) in Japan from January to December 2022. The SAB management quality was evaluated using the SAB-QI score (ranging from 0 to 13 points), which consists of 13 QIs (grouped into five categories) based on previous literature. Of the 4,448 positive blood culture episodes, 289 patients with SAB (6.5