A systematic review on clinical benefits of continuous administration of beta-lactam antibiotics

The clinical benefits of extended infusion or continuous infusion of beta-lactam antibiotics remain controversial. We systematically reviewed the literature to determine whether any clinical benefits exist for administration of beta-lactam antibiotics by extended or continuous infusion.

PubMed (January 1950 to November 2007), EMBASE (1966 to November 2007), and the Cochrane Controlled Trial Register were searched (updated November 2007).

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were meta-analyzed, and observational studies were described by two unblinded reviewers.

A total of 846 patients from eligible prospective randomized controlled studies were included in the meta-analysis. Two observational studies were deemed appropriate for description.

A meta-analysis of prospective RCTs was undertaken using Review Manager. Among a total of 59 potentially relevant studies, 14 RCTs involving a total of 846 patients from nine countries were deemed appropriate for meta-analysis. The use of continuous infusion of a beta-lactam antibiotic was not associated with an improvement in clinical cure (n = 755 patients; odds ratio: 1.04, 95% confidence interval: 0.74-1.46, p = 0.83, I = 0%) or mortality (n = 541 patients; odds ratio: 1.00, 95% confidence interval: 0.48-2.06, p = 1.00, I = 14.8%). All RCTs except one used a higher antibiotic dose in the bolus administration group. Two observational studies, not pooled because they did not meet the a priori criteria for meta-analysis, showed that beta-lactam administration by extended or continuous infusion was associated with an improvement in clinical cure. The difference in the results between the meta-analysis results and the observational studies could be explained by the bias created by a higher dose of antibiotic in the bolus group in the RCTs and because many of the RCTs only recruited patients with a low acuity of illness.

The limited data available suggest that continuous infusion of beta-lactam antibiotics leads to the same clinical results as higher dosed bolus administration in hospitalized patients.