Antibiotic assessment tool meets a physician need

UCI-led study finds that prompts help improve appropriateness of prescription

IN THE NEWS: Individuals hospitalized with urinary tract infections or pneumonia are often prescribed harmful broad-spectrum antibiotics out of an abundance of caution.

UCI Health infectious disease expert Dr. Shruti Gohil was the senior investigator on two studies that evaluated a potential solution: an algorithm-driven risk assessment to help physicians choose an appropriate antibiotic for their patients. Gohil spoke to Medscape about the research.

"What physicians have been needing is something to hang their hat on, to be able to say, 'Okay, well, this one's a low-risk person.’ We cannot know which element — prompt, education, or feedback — worked, but the data suggests that the prompt was the main driver.”

Gohil is a board-certified infectious disease expert, the associate medical director for UCI Health Epidemiology and Infection Prevention and an assistant professor at the UCI School of Medicine. Her clinical interests include hospital epidemiology, infection prevention, communicable disease transmission and multidrug resistant organism infections.

Gohil leads several national studies to assess patient risk for multidrug-resistant bacterial infections and to prompt physicians to limit the use of extended-spectrum antibacterial drugs in real time.

Read more

• Medscape: Automated patient risk assessment lowers antibiotic prescribing rates ›
• US News & World Report: FDA approves new antibiotic against UTIs ›
• Two clinical trials identify a better way to target appropriate antibiotics for patients hospitalized with pneumonia or urinary tract infection ›
• Clinical trial identifies strategy to rapidly detect, respond to hospital outbreaks ›
• Antibiotic-resistant superbugs: a looming health threat ›