Antimicrobial stewardship program implementation in a medical intensive care unit at a tertiary care hospital in Saudi Arabia.

Background And Objectives: Antimicrobial stewardship programs (ASPs) have shown to prevent the emergence of antimicrobial resistance associated with an inappropriate antimicrobial use. The primary objective of this study was to compare the prescribing appropriateness rate of the empirical antibiotic therapy before and after the ASP implementation in a tertiary care hospital. Secondary objectives include the rate of Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea (CDAD), physicians' acceptance rate, patient's intensive care unit (ICU) course, total utilization using defined daily dose, and total direct cost of antibiotics.

The impact of clinical pharmacist in a cardiac-surgery intensive care unit.

Objective: To evaluate the clinical pharmacists' interventions in an intensive care unit (ICU) setting with regard to their acceptance by the medical team, frequency, clinical significance, and targeted patient's outcomes.

Methods: This is a prospective, non-comparative, observational study evaluating the clinical pharmacist interventions in an ICU setting from December 2002 to May 2003. The study was conducted in a 19-bed Cardiac-Surgery ICU at King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Center, a tertiary-care hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Rescue in situ thrombolysis for acute coronary thromboembolism in an angiographically normal coronary artery.

Coronary thromboembolism in an angiographically normal coronary artery is extremely uncommon. There are few instances where normal coronary arteries have been documented just prior to an episode of acute thromboembolic insult. We now report such a case of acute coronary thromboembolism in a patient with widely patent coronary vessels documented just prior to the event during preoperative screening angiogram with successful in situ revascularization.