A quality improvement program at a single children’s hospital succeeded in cutting back inappropriate antibiotic prescribing, in a new study.

Researchers found within six months of introducing new electronic and educational tools, doctors were meeting national guidelines for treatment of childhood pneumonia in 100 percent of patients.

“It’s quite truthfully astounding,” said Dr. Thomas Brogan, a pediatrician at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle who wasn’t involved in the new study.

“They did an incredible job.”

Brogan said the program, instituted by Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, can serve as a model for other institutions looking to get their antibiotic prescribing practices up to speed with current recommendations.

In mid-2011, the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society and the Infectious Diseases Society of America issued guidelines for treating kids who develop pneumonia outside of the hospital, called community-acquired pneumonia.

The recommendations state that doctors should prescribe the antibiotic ampicillin as a first line of therapy unless other circumstances – such as a child’s underlying medical conditions – require a different approach.

Choosing this drug could help prevent antibiotic resistance, in which bacteria become immune to certain antibiotics because they are used inappropriately, said Brogan.

Ampicillin is considered a “narrow spectrum” antibiotic, meaning it only affects a select type of bacteria.

On the other hand, “broad spectrum” antibiotics, which are often used to treat pneumonia, can wipe out a wide range of bacteria.

If bacteria become resistant to ampicillin, there are still plenty of other antibiotics that could work on the organisms that ampicillin doesn’t affect. But resistance to broad spectrum drugs leaves doctors with fewer options to treat those resistant bugs, Brogan said.

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Courtesy Reuters.com