Concurrent ceftazidime DUE with clinical pharmacy intervention.

Ceftazidime use at our institution, a 580-bed county teaching hospital, has steadily increased since its addition to the formulary in 1986. In response to this increased use and because the institutional antibiogram showed increased resistance by Pseudomonas aeruginosa (from 10 to 28% resistant), the P & T Committee requested that a drug use evaluation (DUE) of ceftazidime be conducted. Analysis of this retrospective pilot study showed that 87% of ceftazidime use was inappropriate.

Evaluation of four assay methods for determination of tobramycin in human serum.

Four assay procedures for tobramycin in serum--enzyme immunoassay (I), substrate-labeled fluorescent immunoassay (II), radioimmunoassay (III), and bioassay (IV)--were compared and evaluated by replicate and analytical recovery studies. I and II were about 50% more precise than III and IV. II was substantially more nearly accurate than the other methods and also gave the best reproducibility (correlation coefficient 0.

Comparison of gentamicin bioassay values utilizing three different indicator organisms.

Gentamicin serum concentrations were monitored via bioassay with three indicators, to determine if assay results were influenced by the testing organism. When mean assay values, from seven samples, were compared to mean target values, there was no significant differences with Staphylococcus epidermidis, Bacillus subtilis or Klebsiella pneumoniae. However, levels from one of the seven samples yield dramatically lower concentrations, for all three indicators, than the target.