[Recent antibiotic use in German acute care hospitals - from benchmarking to improved prescribing and quality care].

Background: In view of increasing rates of bacterial resistance and Clostridium difficile infections efforts to enhance appropriate and intelligent antibiotic prescribing have become important. A prerequisite is the availability of reliable antibiotic use data. So far antibiotic consumption data in this country had only a very limited coverage of acute care hospitals.

Methods: We obtained drug dispensing data from 109 German acute care hospital pharmacies and calculated yearly antibiotic use density values stratified for hospital size and type of service / department. Antibiotic use density was expressed as daily doses per 100 patient days (occupied bed days). For daily dose definition, both hospital adapted doses of antibiotics ("recommended daily dose", RDD) as well as the official WHO-defined daily doses (DDD) were used.

Results: The overall antibiotic use density was 43.5 RDD/100 patient days (median) with an interquartile range of 36-48 RDD/100 - corresponding to a median of 64.4 DDD/100 (interquartile range, 53-73 DDD/100). The antibiotic use levels in university hospitals were higher than in non-university hospitals that, in turn, showed similar antibiotic use density values across different hospital size categories. Antibiotic use density values for intensive care units were approximately twice as high as for normal wards but the proportion of antibiotic doses prescribed in intensive care per hospital-wide consumption was only 12 % (non-university hospitals) to 18 % (university hospitals). Extensive antibiotic use was also observed in university hospital hematology-oncology departments. Overall, cephalosporins were used slightly more frequently than penicillins, and fluoroquinolones were the third most frequently prescribed drug class. The proportion of first and second generation cephalosporins, and of third and fourth generation cephalosporins ranged between 5-37 % and between < 1 to 29 % of all dispensed antibiotic doses across the hospitals, respectively. The top five used drugs were cefuroxime, piperacillin-tazobactam, ceftriaxon, metronidazole und ciprofloxacin.

Conclusions: Prescribing of antibiotics on almost every second day of hospitalization was extensive and highly variable, and the frequent use of cephalosporins is noteworthy. It is possible that the development of resistance and the rate of Clostridium difficile infection is associated with the diverse antibiotic use intensity and preferences for prescribing of cephalosporins and fluoroquinolones. Continuous antibiotic use surveillance and evaluation of prescribing patterns in acute care with feedback and benchmarking will help optimizing antibiotic use and better assessing strategies to minimize resistance and Clostridium difficile infection, and eventually improve patient safety.