Clinical and Antibiotic Management of Urinary Tract Infections Pre- and Postimplementation of the CLINITEK AUWi System From Siemens to Screen Out Negative Urine Samples Submitted for Culture: A Retrospective Cohort Study

To compare patterns of inpatient and outpatient antibiotic use between patients who awaited urine culture results and patients whose urine specimens had been submitted for culture and were screened using the CLINITEK AUWi System.

This quasi-experimental retrospective cohort study included patient records with a urine specimen and hospital admission from 1 month before to 1 month after implementation of the system. We compared data from the pre- and postimplementation groups using the χ2 test or Fisher exact test.

A similar proportion of patients in the pre- and postimplementation groups were prescribed antibiotics (71.2% vs 80.0%; P = .45); the postimplementation group had a significantly shorter length of stay in hours (median, 226 vs 123; P = .005). The median inpatient antibiotic treatment duration was lower for those in the postimplementation group; however, the duration of outpatient antibiotic treatment was longer.

Our findings suggest that screening specimens using the CLINITEK AUWi System may reduce the excess administration of antibiotics.