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How much European prescribing physicians know about invasive fungal infections management?

BACKGROUND: The use of systemic antifungal agents has increased in most tertiary care centers. However, antifungal stewardship has deserved very little attention. Our objective was to assess the knowledge of European prescribing physicians as a first step of an international program of antifungal st...

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Autores principales: Valerio, Maricela, Vena, Antonio, Bouza, Emilio, Reiter, Nanna, Viale, Pierluigi, Hochreiter, Marcel, Giannella, Maddalena, Muñoz, Patricia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4344747/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25888028
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12879-015-0809-z
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author Valerio, Maricela
Vena, Antonio
Bouza, Emilio
Reiter, Nanna
Viale, Pierluigi
Hochreiter, Marcel
Giannella, Maddalena
Muñoz, Patricia
author_facet Valerio, Maricela
Vena, Antonio
Bouza, Emilio
Reiter, Nanna
Viale, Pierluigi
Hochreiter, Marcel
Giannella, Maddalena
Muñoz, Patricia
author_sort Valerio, Maricela
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The use of systemic antifungal agents has increased in most tertiary care centers. However, antifungal stewardship has deserved very little attention. Our objective was to assess the knowledge of European prescribing physicians as a first step of an international program of antifungal stewardship. METHODS: Staff physicians and residents of 4 European countries were invited to complete a 20-point questionnaire that was based on current guidelines of invasive candidiasis and invasive aspergillosis. RESULTS: 121 physicians (44.6% staff, 55.4% residents) from Spain 53.7%, Italy 17.4%, Denmark 16.5% and Germany 12.4% completed the survey. Hospital departments involved were: medical 51.2%, ICUs 43%, surgical 3.3% and pharmaceutical 2.5%. The mean score of adequate responses (± SD) was 5.8 ± 1.7 points, with statistically significant differences between study site and type of physicians. Regarding candidiasis, 69% of the physicians clearly distinguished colonization from infection and the local rate of fluconazole resistance was known by 24%. The accepted indications of antifungal prophylaxis were known by 38%. Regarding aspergillosis, 52% of responders could differentiate colonization from infection and 42% knew the diagnostic value of galactomannan. Radiological features of invasive aspergillosis were well recognized by 58% of physicians and 57% of them were aware of the antifungal considered as first line treatment. However, only 37% knew the recommended length of therapy. CONCLUSIONS: This simple, easily completed questionnaire enabled us to identify some weakness in the knowledge of invasive fungal infection management among European physicians. This survey could serve as a guide to design a future tailored European training program. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12879-015-0809-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-43447472015-03-01 How much European prescribing physicians know about invasive fungal infections management? Valerio, Maricela Vena, Antonio Bouza, Emilio Reiter, Nanna Viale, Pierluigi Hochreiter, Marcel Giannella, Maddalena Muñoz, Patricia BMC Infect Dis Research Article BACKGROUND: The use of systemic antifungal agents has increased in most tertiary care centers. However, antifungal stewardship has deserved very little attention. Our objective was to assess the knowledge of European prescribing physicians as a first step of an international program of antifungal stewardship. METHODS: Staff physicians and residents of 4 European countries were invited to complete a 20-point questionnaire that was based on current guidelines of invasive candidiasis and invasive aspergillosis. RESULTS: 121 physicians (44.6% staff, 55.4% residents) from Spain 53.7%, Italy 17.4%, Denmark 16.5% and Germany 12.4% completed the survey. Hospital departments involved were: medical 51.2%, ICUs 43%, surgical 3.3% and pharmaceutical 2.5%. The mean score of adequate responses (± SD) was 5.8 ± 1.7 points, with statistically significant differences between study site and type of physicians. Regarding candidiasis, 69% of the physicians clearly distinguished colonization from infection and the local rate of fluconazole resistance was known by 24%. The accepted indications of antifungal prophylaxis were known by 38%. Regarding aspergillosis, 52% of responders could differentiate colonization from infection and 42% knew the diagnostic value of galactomannan. Radiological features of invasive aspergillosis were well recognized by 58% of physicians and 57% of them were aware of the antifungal considered as first line treatment. However, only 37% knew the recommended length of therapy. CONCLUSIONS: This simple, easily completed questionnaire enabled us to identify some weakness in the knowledge of invasive fungal infection management among European physicians. This survey could serve as a guide to design a future tailored European training program. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12879-015-0809-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2015-02-21 /pmc/articles/PMC4344747/ /pubmed/25888028 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12879-015-0809-z Text en © Valerio et al.; licensee BioMed Central. 2015 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Valerio, Maricela
Vena, Antonio
Bouza, Emilio
Reiter, Nanna
Viale, Pierluigi
Hochreiter, Marcel
Giannella, Maddalena
Muñoz, Patricia
How much European prescribing physicians know about invasive fungal infections management?
title How much European prescribing physicians know about invasive fungal infections management?
title_full How much European prescribing physicians know about invasive fungal infections management?
title_fullStr How much European prescribing physicians know about invasive fungal infections management?
title_full_unstemmed How much European prescribing physicians know about invasive fungal infections management?
title_short How much European prescribing physicians know about invasive fungal infections management?
title_sort how much european prescribing physicians know about invasive fungal infections management?
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4344747/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25888028
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12879-015-0809-z
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