ArticleThe Southern African journal of critical care : the official journal of the Critical Care Society2020
Empirical antibiotic choice alters microbiological outcomes: Findings from comparative antibiograms in a trauma intensive care unit.
Article in The Southern African journal of critical care : the official journal of the Critical Care Society, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 4 citations in OpenAlex.
- Guidelines for Enhanced Recovery After Trauma and Intensive Care (ERATIC): Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) and International Association for Trauma Surgery and Intensive Care (IATSIC) Society Recommendations: Paper 2: Postoperative and Intensive Care Recommendations.World journal of surgery · 2025Guideline
- Candida auris-a systematic review to inform the world health organization fungal priority pathogens list.Medical mycology · 2024Pooled it
- Antimicrobial stewardship in the intensive care unit.Journal of intensive medicine · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Inappropriate empirical antibiotics promote antibiotic resistance. Antibiograms guide empirical antibiotic therapy by outlining the percentage susceptibility of each pathogen to individual antibiotics. In 2016, the Trauma Intensive Care Unit at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital escalated empirical antibiotic therapy for nosocomial infections from piperacillin-tazobactam to imipenem plus amikacin. Objectives: This study assessed the impact of escalation in empirical antimicrobial treatment on organism prevalence and resistance profile. Methods: A retrospective analysis of bacterial and fungal microscopy, culture and susceptibility reports from the laboratory information system of the National Health Laboratory Services, from 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2015 and 1 January 2017 to 31 December 2017, was conducted. Data were de-duplicated according to standard guidelines. Fisher's exact test was used to determine Results: Organism prevalence shifted between the years, with a 2.7% increase in streptococci ( Conclusion: Escalation in the use of empirical antibiotics showed a change in organism prevalence and an improvement in the susceptibility profile of MDR non-fermenters. Contributions of the study: Current literature on the effects of antibiogram-guided empirical antibiotics is scarce within the South African context. This study shows how antibiograms are an effective antimicrobial stewardship strategy to reduce antimicrobial resistance rates by guiding appropriate choice of empirical antibiotics.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.