Meropenem utilization in military hospital’s ICU, Khartoum-Sudan

Abstract EN

Patients admitted to the Intensive care unit (ICU) are seriously ill, and often suffer from chronic critical illnesses.

Antimicrobial agents are one of the frequently utilized drug classes in an ICU setting.

The objective of this study is evaluate the utilization of Meropenem in ICU Sudanese patients in a military hospital.

This longitudinal observational prospective study was from the patient’s files, attended ICU military hospital, during the period from September – October 2015.

A pre-designed and tested questionnaire was used to collect the data.

The collected data, entered and analyzed using SPSS software version 17.0.

52% of the patients taking Meropenem were female.

52.4% from the patients presented in ICU taking Meropenem their age above 60 years old.

81% of patients prescribed to them Meropenem empirically, 4.8% of patients having pneumonia and 4.8% having septicemia so prescribed to them Meropenem.

No culture sensitivity test done before prescribing Meropenem.

76.2% of patients have therapeutic response after using Meropenem, while 9.5% failed to respond to Meropenem (therapeutic failure).

The majority of the patients (61.9%) prescribed them Meropenem in dose 0.5-1gm 12 hourly.

As conclusion, Meropenem use in this study appears to be inconsistent with evidence based assessment criteria.

The most evident inappropriateness was observed when Meropenem was used as an empirical therapy.