Research article

Daily antibiotic cost of nosocomial infections in a Turkish university hospital

Dilara Inan¹ , Rabin Saba¹ , Filiz Gunseren¹ , Gozde Ongut² , Ozge Turhan¹ , Ata Nevzat Yalcin¹ and Latife Mamikoglu¹

¹  Department of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey

²  Department of Medical Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey

author email corresponding author email

BMC Infectious Diseases 2005, 5:5doi:10.1186/1471-2334-5-5

Published:	31 January 2005

Abstract

Background

Many studies associated nosocomial infections with increased hospital costs due to extra days in hospital, staff time, extra investigations and drug treatment. The cost of antibiotic treatment for these infections represents a significant part of hospital expenditure. This prospective observational study was designed to determine the daily antibiotic cost of nosocomial infections per infected adult patient in Akdeniz University Hospital.

Methods

All adult patients admitted to the ICUs between January 1, 2000, and June 30, 2003 who had only one nosocomial infection during their stay were included in the study. Infection sites and pathogens, antimicrobial treatment of patient and it's cost were recorded. Daily antibiotic costs were calculated per infected patient.

Results

Among the 8460 study patients, 817 (16.6%) developed 1407 episodes of nosocomial infection. Two hundred thirty three (2.7%) presented with only one nosocomial infection. Mean daily antibiotic cost was $89.64. Daily antibiotic cost was $99.02 for pneumonia, $94.32 for bloodstream infection, $94.31 for surgical site infection, $52.37 for urinary tract infection, and $162.35 for the other infections per patient. The treatment of Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections was the most expensive infection treated. Piperacillin-tazobactam and amikacin were the most prescribed antibiotics, and meropenem was the most expensive drug for treatment of the nosocomial infections in the ICU.

Conclusions

Daily antibiotic cost of nosocomial infections is an important part of extra costs that should be reduced providing rational antibiotic usage in hospitals.