Ninety percent of patients in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Children’s of Alabama will undergo a surgical procedure during their admission, putting them at risk of infections and other complications. Thus, the NICU team has been implementing performance improvement initiatives to improve outcomes, including focusing on pain control and standardizing handoffs before and after surgery.
The most recent initiative targets perioperative antibiotic use. “The vast majority of surgical patients will require some type of antibiotic during the perioperative period,” said neonatologist Allison Black, M.D., “and we noticed there wasn’t any standard as to the dose or type of antibiotics used for each procedure.”
That’s a problem, she said, because prolonged use of broad-spectrum antibiotics may be harmful. “It changes the infant’s gut flora, increases the risk for antibiotic-resistant infections, and may have toxicities,” she said.
Thus, the NICU team, including physicians, nurse practitioners, and pharmacists, collaborated with the general surgeons and each surgical subspecialty to devise a solution. The surgeons collected evidence and then recommended an antibiotic as well as its dose and duration based on the specific procedure. The team used these recommendations and the evidence supporting them to create the NICU Perioperative Antibiotic Prophylaxis guidelines.
“Now, unless there is a specific reason, all perioperative antibiotics are ordered based on these guidelines, and surgeons follow the protocol,” Dr. Black said. “It’s like clockwork.” The result is less use of prolonged empiric antibiotics and less confusion over which to use. Another advantage is less exposure to nephrotoxic drugs that can lead to acute kidney injury, she said.
The unit’s two pharmacists ensure the protocol is followed. “Initially, it was difficult to break our decades-long habit of asking the surgeons which antibiotic they preferred and for how long after each surgical case,” said clinical pharmacist Sadie Stone, PharmD. “With the perioperative guidelines in place, we can initiate an evidence-based regimen quickly for our most common surgical procedures.”
Since instituting the guidelines, the pharmacists have been collecting data and tracking guideline compliance. “We discuss each surgical plan with the nurse practitioner based on the guidelines when the patient returns from surgery,” said clinical pharmacist Emily Evans, PharmD. Each case is then retrospectively reviewed to determine if the procedure has an antimicrobial course included in the guidelines. If so, the actual antimicrobial course is screened against the guidelines for adherence. “These guidelines have expanded our antimicrobial stewardship role in the NICU,” she said.
“The hope is that reduction in the use of antibiotics will decrease the need for central lines, which, in turn, also reduces the risk of infections and associated complications,” said Dr. Black. The team also tracks post-operative infection rates to ensure there is no increase.
“This initiative again shows the improvement possible with multidisciplinary collaboration,” she said.
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