Implementation of a Leeches + Antimicrobial Prophylaxis Order Panel to Optimize Medicinal Leech Use at a Tertiary Care Academic Medical Center.

Medicinal leech therapy promotes vascular flow and can be used to salvage grafts. Medicinal leeches have a symbiotic relationship with species and can therefore present a risk of bacterial transmission to patients. Antimicrobial prophylaxis is warranted for the duration of leech therapy, however, an institutional evaluation of 40 patients receiving medicinal leech therapy demonstrated poor adherence with recommendations.

Evaluation of an electronic antimicrobial time-out on antimicrobial utilization at a large health system.

We evaluated the impact of an electronic health record based 72-hour antimicrobial time-out (ATO) on antimicrobial utilization. We observed that 6 hours after the ATO, 21% of empiric antimicrobials were discontinued or de-escalated. There was a significant reduction in the duration of antimicrobial therapy but no impact on overall antimicrobial usage metrics.