Impact of reducing time-to-antibiotics on sepsis mortality, antibiotic use, and adverse events (31 October 2023)

Summary

Reducing the amount of time to give antibiotics to sepsis patients should contribute to better health outcomes, but the broad impact of reducing time-to-antibiotics may vary significantly, according to an AHRQ-funded study. In the study, published in Annals of the American Thoracic Society, researchers found that in 60% percent of hospitalisations patients received antibiotics within 48 hours of presentation and in 13% of hospitalisations patients experienced an adverse event, based on records of over 1.5 million hospitalised patients. The authors then ran simulations of 12 hospital scenarios based on the volume of sepsis cases (high, medium and low volume), and found that the effect of faster time to antibiotics varies markedly across simulated hospital scenarios, but new antibiotic-associated adverse events were rare.