Incidence and prevention strategies for postprostate biopsy infections in the United States from 2012 to 2021

Infectious complications following prostate biopsy are costly and potentially deadly. Multiple strategies have been devised to avoid infections, including augmented prophylaxis and transperineal biopsy (TPBx). Their uptake and success in reducing population-level infectious outcomes following biopsy are largely unknown. Here, we evaluate contemporary postbiopsy infections and hospital admissions in a large insurance claims dataset.

The Merative MarketScan Database was queried for prostate biopsies from 2012 to 2021. MarketScan contains inpatient and outpatient data on >40 million individuals annually. Our primary endpoint was overall and sepsis-related hospitalizations within 14-days of prostate biopsy, and postbiopsy infections not requiring admission. Multvariable analysis evaluated temporal trends in endpoints.

We identified 301,733 patients undergoing prostate biopsy between 2012 and 2021 among whom 2,587 developed sepsis. The proportion of patients with sepsis decreased from 1.1% in 2017 to 0.7% in 2021, following an increase from 0.6% in 2012 to 1.1% in 2016. This paralleled trends in hospitalizations within 14-days. Postbiopsy infections not requiring hospitalization remained stable across the study period. These temporal trends persisted even after adjustment for patient age, comorbidities, biopsy history, insurance status, and geographic region. Single-agent fluoroquinolone use decreased alongside an increase in multiagent prophylaxis over the study period.

We identified a decrease in postbiopsy all-cause and sepsis-related hospitalization, synchronous with augmented prophylaxis. Our findings suggest population-level improvement in major postbiopsy complications, reversing a trend from historical series.