A New Approach to Understanding Multidrug-resistant Infections

Vikas Gupta, PharmD, BCPS, director of Clinical Strategy at Becton Dickinson, explains his team’s unique approach to understanding multidrug-resistant infections.

Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability)

“[When looking at multidrug-resistant organisms], it’s not just [about] how much, but where. What we wanted to do is characterize [it], in different types of settings. A lot of the focus has been around hospital-acquired infections or healthcare-associated infections, and how much is in that. And, in fact, [the] Antibiotic Threat Report from the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] focused a lot on that antibiotic threat in healthcare-associated infections. [It’s] a very important report, [which has] very much heightened the awareness of these resistance pathogens.

But we wanted to focus on [the topic] in a different [way that would] complement their report, [by looking] at different settings; [so, not just] patients that come to the hospital or develop these [infections] in the hospital, but also in the nonacute-care setting. Many of the clinicians and the companies that we spoke with that approached us with these types of questions felt that there was a higher prevalence [of multidrug-resistant organisms] out there and that, potentially, even in the nonacute-care setting, there may be more prevalence of these resistant organisms; this is one of the reasons why we looked at this from a different angle overall.”