Dive Brief:
- Antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections among children in the United States have increased 700% since 2007, according to a study published in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society.
- The cohort study used data from 48 children’s hospitals to determine how many patients under age 18 who were diagnosed with an enterobacteriacea-associated infection between January 1, 2007 and March 31, 2015.
- The incidence of infection was associated with longer hospital stays and an increased risk of death, the authors said.
Dive Insight:
Increasing instances of infections that do not respond to any of the antibiotics currently available for use are a growing concern for providers, as are hospital-acquired infections. This study is one of the only reports to focus on resistant infections in children.
"Escalating antibiotic resistance limits treatment options, worsens clinical outcomes and is an evolving global public health crisis," the authors wrote.
Surgical site infections add more than 400,000 hospital days and $900 million in costs per year, according to the World Health Organization. WHO released new guidelines for preventing such infections in November.
But hospitals are still prescribing a lot of antibiotics. Research in JAMA Internal Medicine found more than 55% of hospital patients between 2006 and 2012 got at least one dose of antibiotic during their stay. According to the CDC, 2 million people have antibiotic-resistant infections each year and 23,000 die from them.
Authors of the recent study said hospital surveillance cultures, strict cohorting, limited use of third-generation cephalosporins and restricted agricultural antibiotic use are recommended to reduce antibiotic-resistant infections and said "we must be vigilant and do everything possible to curtail, or even reverse, this process."