Abstract

To assess the duration of antimicrobial treatment; hospital length of stay; and invasive bacterial infections rates in hospitalised infants following the adoption of a management guideline. Faculty agreed to a standard of 24 h of antibiotic treatment for well-appearing febrile infants with proven viral infection and no growth on bacterial cultures. The outcomes were the duration of hospitalisation and antibiotic treatment of febrile infants less than 8 weeks of age who have enterovirus, parechovirus, respiratory viruses detected. We monitored re-admissions and missed invasive infections. Of the total 1696 infants studied, the median antibiotic treatment duration decreased from 31.5 to 24.8 h in virus-infected infants ≤21 days of age (p = 0.02) and from 26 to 19.7 h in infants 22-56 days of age (p < 0.001). The decrease was less in infants not infected with a virus. No patient had an invasive infection identified after discharge. The implementation of our care standard resulted in reduction in antibiotic treatment duration without known delayed diagnosis of bacterial infections. Infants without a proven viral aetiology may need further study to inform management decisions.

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