TO THE EDITOR—We commend Dr Abbo and colleagues for their study, which highlights the need to standardize and enhance appropriate antimicrobial prescribing and stewardship curricula in US medical student education [1]. Ninety percent of surveyed fourth-year medical students felt that they would like more education on the appropriate use of antimicrobials; only one-third felt adequately prepared...

To promote heightened vigilance concerning antibiotic agents in Canadian hospitals, Accreditation Canada has implemented antibiotic stewardship as a required organizational practice.1 Antibiotic stewardship is the process of ensuring that only necessary and appropriate antibiotic agents are used and that their use is appropriate for each individual patient. It involves optimizing all steps of a...

The study was designed to compare antibiotic use, cost and consumption before and after an initiation of an antibiotic-restriction policy in our hospital. The policy was applied in 2003, and the prescription of two groups of antibiotics (intravenously used and expensive antibiotics) was restricted. A prescription for the restricted antibiotics could be obtained with approval by an infectious di...

BACKGROUND Appropriate antibiotic treatment decreases mortality, while superfluous treatment is associated with antibiotic resistance. We built a computerized decision support system for antibiotic treatment (TREAT) targeting these outcomes. METHODS Prospective cohort study comparing TREAT's advice to physician's treatment followed by a cluster randomized trial comparing wards using TREAT (in...

A thorough knowledge of the principles of antibiotic stewardship is a crucial part of high-quality orthopaedic surgical care. These principles include (1) determining appropriate indications for antibiotic administration, (2) choosing the correct antibiotic based on known or expected pathogens, (3) determining the correct dosage, and (4) determining the appropriate duration of treatment. Antibi...

Background. Antibiotic exposure is an important andmodifiable risk factor forClostridium difficile infection (CDI).We hypothesized that appropriate antibiotic therapy for common outpatient infections might reduce the risk of community-acquired CDI (CA-CDI). Methods. We conducted a case-control study of independent-living adult outpatients for two ambulatory infectious diagnoses: urinary tract i...