Jason Gallagher, PharmD, on New Gram-Negative Agents and Practical Micro Lab Interventions

At the Making a Difference in Infectious Diseases (MAD-ID 2019) annual meeting, Jason Gallagher, PharmD, FCCP, FIDSA, BCPS, clinical professor at Temple University College of Pharmacy and editor-in-chief of Contagion®, gave 2 presentations, first recapping the new agents to treat gram-negative infections and then on practical interventions in the micro lab.

Following his presentations, Gallagher sat down with Contagion®’s editorial team to recap his workshops and share valuable insight for providers.

Interview transcript (modified slightly for readability):

New Tests and Technologies for the Microbiology Steward: Practical Interventions With the Micro Lab

In my discussion about practical innovations for the microbiology lab, that talk was based on trying to discuss the areas where small interventions can have a big impact. For example, it’s been shown that just how you report that someone has a positive urinary culture even when they don’t have an infection, how you report that, whether you choose to report that or not has an enormous impact on how people prescribe antimicrobials. Another study has shown that just putting in a small comment that says, “This culture with normal flora has no Pseudomonas and no MRSA in it,” influences prescribing. It makes people more comfortable in not treating those patients empirically with drugs that are active against those organisms. Those kind of high-value, easy interventions are what that talk was about.

The Expanding Pipeline: New Gram-Negative Agents

I discussed the new agents that are available for gram-negative infections, and specifically went over ceftolozane-tazobactam, eravacycline, ceftazidime-avibactam, and plazomicin. In this discussion, I went over the data that supported those agents, those that got it approved, and tried to highlight the areas of need they filled most specifically.