Clinical complications in patients with primary and recurrent infection: A real-world data analysis.

Objective: infection and recurrent infection result in substantial economic burden and healthcare resource use. Sepsis and bowel surgery are known to be serious complications of infection. This study evaluated clinical complications in patients with infection and recurrent infection during a 12-month period following the primary infection.

Methods: A retrospective analysis of commercial claims data from the IQVIA PharMetrics Plus™ database was conducted for patients aged 18-64 years with an index infection episode requiring inpatient stay or an outpatient visit for infection followed by a infection treatment. Each infection episode ended after a 14-day infection-claim-free period was observed. Recurrent infection was defined as a further infection episode within an 8-week window following the claim-free period. Clinical complications were documented over 12 months of follow-up and stratified by the number of recurrent infection episodes (0 rCDI, 1 rCDI, 2 rCDI, and 3+ rCDI).

Results: In total, 46,571 patients with index infection episode were included. During the 6-month pre-index, the mean (standard deviation) baseline Charlson comorbidity index score, by increasing the recurrent infection group, was 1.2 (1.9), 1.5 (2.2), 1.8 (2.3), and 2.3 (2.5). During the 12-month follow-up, sepsis occurred in 16.5%, 27.3%, 33.1%, and 43.3% of patients, and subtotal colectomy or diverting loop ileostomy was performed in 4.6%, 7.3%, 8.9%, and 10.5% of patients, respectively, by increasing the recurrent infection group.

Conclusions: Reduction in recurrent infection is an important step to reduce the burden of serious clinical complications, and new treatments are needed to reduce infection recurrence.