Antimicrobial prescribing in a secondary care setting during the COVID-19 pandemic

Increased antimicrobial resistance patterns lead to limited options for antimicrobial agents, affecting patient health and increasing hospital costs.

To investigate the antimicrobial prescribing patterns at two district hospitals in Northern Ireland before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A mixed prospective-retrospective study was designed to compare pre- and during pandemic antimicrobial prescribing data in both hospitals using a Global Point Prevalence Survey.

Of the 591 patients surveyed in both hospitals, 43.8% were treated with 402 antimicrobials. A total of 82.8% of antimicrobial prescriptions were for empirical treatment. No significant difference existed in numbers of patients treated or antimicrobials used before and during the pandemic. There was a slight decrease of 3.3% in the compliance rate with hospital antimicrobial guidelines during the pandemic when compared with the pre-pandemic year of 2019, when it was 69.5%. Treatment based on patients' biomarker data also slightly decreased from 83.5% pre-pandemic (2019) to 81.5% during the pandemic (2021).

There was no overall significant impact of the pandemic on the antimicrobial prescribing patterns in either hospital when compared with the pre-pandemic findings. The antimicrobial stewardship programmes would appear to have played an important role in controlling antimicrobial consumption during the pandemic.