A work in progress: antimicrobial stewardship in solid organ transplant patient populations

To review recent medical literature addressing antimicrobial stewardship in solid organ transplant (SOT) recipients.

Few studies with a strict focus on SOT patients have been published to date. Team-based antimicrobial stewardship interventions in SOT populations do have beneficial impacts on antimicrobial stewardship-relevant outcomes. Several studies have compared SOT-specific antibiograms to widely accepted hospital antibiograms; these studies all have found important differences in resistance rates among bacterial pathogens. Novel biomarkers like virome monitoring for assessing the net state of immunosuppression hold promise for individualized antimicrobial stewardship interventions.

SOT patients are an understudied population with respect to antimicrobial stewardship interventions. Current antimicrobial stewardship interventions for SOT patients are largely extrapolated from studies in general patient populations and may not accurately reflect SOT-specific infection risks or outcomes. Antimicrobial stewardship interventions do impact SOT-relevant care goals but require significantly more research to achieve the depth and reach of antimicrobial stewardship interventions developed for general populations.