COVID-19 Pandemic Drove Carbapenem Resistance in Gram-Negative Infections
In this podcast episode, Christian Sandrock, MD, MPH, FCCP, describes the need to make significant progress in antimicrobial stewardship.
The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to reverberate across other areas of health and medicine.
Notably, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reported antimicrobial resistance (AMR) worsened by at least 15% during the pandemic.
“The biggest one that is concerning us is carbapenem-resistance among the gram-negatives, and that has increased,” said Christian Sandrock, MD, MPH, FCCP, vice chair for Quality and Safety, division vice chief of Internal Medicine, director of Critical Care, and professor of medicine at UC Davis Medical Center.
In this latest podcast episode, Contagion Assistant Managing Editor John Parkinson interviews Sandrock about how his institution is battling these bugs, the need for new therapies, and what we can all do to boost antimicrobial stewardship.
From the vantage point of his teaching hospital in Sacramento, Sandrock said, “We’ve actually seen things get a little bit worse, unfortunately.” Now is the time to renew the fight against the global threat of AMR.
Specifically, Sandrock discusses significant strides need takes to combat the rise in hospital-acquired bacterial pneumonia (HABP) and ventilator-acquired bacterial pneumonia (VABP).
