Restricting Antibiotic Use Fuels Drop in Antibiotic-resistant Infections

Susan Kline, MD, MPH, associate professor of medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases and International Medicine, medical director for Infection Control, lead physician for Antibiotic Stewardship, University of Minnesota, discusses how restricting use of vancomycin impacted the emergence of vancomycin-resistant enterococci.

Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability)

“Part of our goal is, if we see a lot of VRE, which is vancomycin-resistant enterococci, we want to reduce the selective pressure, [meaning] we want to minimize unnecessary vancomycin use. At our institution, vancomycin is a restricted antibiotic. It’s restricted to try to prevent further emergence of VRE. And so, we think because we have a tight restriction on vancomycin, that that’s part of the reason why we’ve actually seen a decrease of VRE infections during our intervention period, which has been going on [for] nearly 10 years.

Right now because we’re seeing more of a problem with carbapenem resistant enterobacteriaceae we’re starting to develop, we’re really trying to watch the use of the carbapenems, and trying to make sure that those aren’t being used unnecessarily, so that we don’t select for further carbapenem resistant enterobacteriaceae.”