EPICO 3.0. Management of non-neutropenic patients in medical wards

Although the management of invasive fungal infection (IFI) has improved, a number of controversies persist regarding the approach to invasive fungal infection in non-neutropenic medical ward patients.

To identify the essential clinical knowledge to elaborate a set of recommendations with a high level of consensus necessary for the management of IFI in non-neutropenic medical ward patients.

A prospective, Spanish questionnaire, which measures consensus through the Delphi technique, was anonymously answered and e-mailed by 30 multidisciplinary national experts, all specialists (intensivists, anesthesiologists, microbiologists, pharmacologists and specialists in infectious diseases) in IFI and belonging to six scientific national societies. They responded to five questions prepared by the coordination group after a thorough review of the literature published in the last few years. For a category to be selected, the level of agreement among the experts in each category had to be equal to or greater than 70%. In a second round, 73 specialists attended a face-to-face meeting held after extracting the recommendations from the chosen topics, and validated the pre-selected recommendations and derived algorithm.

The following recommendations were validated and included in the algorithm: 1. several elements were identified as risk factors for invasive candidiasis (IC) in non-hematologic medical patients; 2. no agreement on the use of the colonization index to decide whether prescribing an early antifungal treatment to stable patients (no shock), with sepsis and no other evident focus and IC risk factors; 3. agreement on the use of the Candida Score to decide whether prescribing early antifungal treatment to stable patients (no shock) with sepsis and no other evident focus and IC risk factors; 4. agreement on initiating early antifungal treatment in stable patients (no shock) with a colonization index>0.4, sepsis with no other evident focus and IC risk factors; 5. agreement on the performance of additional procedures in stable patients (no shock) with sepsis and no other evident focus, IC risk factors, without colonization index>0.4, but with a high degree of suspicion.

Based on the expert's recommendations, an algorithm for the management of non-neutropenic medical patients was constructed and validated. This algorithm may be useful to support bedside prescription.