Forty percent to 60% of antimicrobial agents administered in hospitals without effective antimicrobial review and control programs are not needed. Excessive use of antimicrobial agents in the hospital promotes colonization of patients with resistant organisms, needlessly exposes them to the risk of an adverse drug reaction, and increases the cost of care. A gradated antimicrobial utilization review program is presented that determines hospital usage, develops guidelines for appropriate cost-effective drug administration, provides several options for implementation, and monitors outcome so that measures can be modified for specific situations. The techniques used are basic epidemiologic measures currently used to assess hospital infections.

Long-term use of indwelling urinary catheters in nursing home (NH) patients is a potential cause of significant morbidity. We retrospectively studied 10 NH patients with chronic indwelling urinary catheters. Sixty-four percent of all 84 antibiotic courses prescribed were for bacteriuria alone without clinical infection. Seventy percent of 63 antibiotic courses were followed by bacteriuria with organisms resistant to the antibiotic administered. Bacteria isolated from NH patients often displayed greater resistance to specific antibiotics than those isolated from hospitalized patients. Four of the 20 urinary tract infections were associated with bacteremia. Three episodes of bacteremia were with highly-resistant organisms and one was fatal. Use of urinary catheters and inappropriate use of antibiotics in NH patients results in urinary tract colonization and infection with resistant bacteria and is an important cause of morbidity and mortality.