Clinical Effectiveness - Rapid Technique for Antibiotic Selection

Antimicrobial resistance is a growing problem. The current process for determining antibiotic sensitivities is time consuming and often leaves patients waiting for results while using the wrong antibiotic. Reducing inappropriate antibiotic use diminishes the development of resistance and reduces expenses. The objective of the study was to determine if a simplified laboratory process using direct plating techniques in association with class disks to identify antibiotic resistance is a viable option to reduce the time it takes to minimize the use of ineffective antibiotics.

A tutored office technician collected specimens. Cultures were performed on traditional laboratory media. They were concurrently submitted as routine cultures to our usual certified outpatient laboratory, Quest Diagnostics Inc.

We found that in this case series an average of 33 hours was saved over conventional microbial culture techniques with 16/16 (100%) concurrence for UTIs and 57.6 hours saved with 9/10 (90%) comparable results for wound cultures.

Using this abbreviated culture technique and reporting resistance rather than sensitivity, not only can save time, but inappropriate antibiotic use may be avoided.