Antibiotics for acute uncomplicated diverticulitis in hospitalized patients

Acute diverticulitis is one of the complications of diverticular disease. Nowadays, there is a paradigm shift regarding the use of antibiotics to manage acute uncomplicated diverticulitis in hospitalized patients, with controversial information about it.

A search was done in Epistemonikos, the most comprehensive health-related systematic review database, maintained by screening multiple information sources including MEDLINE/PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane, among others. Data were extracted from the identified systematic reviews, data from primary studies were analyzed, which in this work considered only randomized clinical trials, a meta-analysis was done, and a summary table of results was created using GRADE methodology.

Eleven systematic reviews were identified that included seven primary studies in total, of which two were randomized control trials. We concluded that the use of antibiotics in acute uncomplicated diverticulitis could slightly increase complications and result in a minor or no difference in the risk of recurrence and need for urgent surgery. However, the certainty of the evidence is low. Regarding hospital stay and readmission, it was not possible to evaluate the effect due to a low certainty of evidence.