Impact of Empirical Antibiotic Therapy on Outcomes of Outpatient Urinary Tract Infection Due to Nonsusceptible <i>Enterobacterales</i>
Michael W. Dunne, Sailaja Puttagunta, Steven I. Aronin, Stephen E. Brossette, John Murray, Vikas Gupta
Abstract
Resistance rates for bacteria that cause urinary tract infections (UTIs) have increased dramatically. Regional rates of resistance to commonly prescribed antibiotics now exceed 20%, which is the threshold at which the Infectious Diseases Society of America recommends therapy be guided by culture. Our goals were to describe outcomes for outpatients with UTIs caused by bacteria resistant to empirically chosen antibiotics and to create a simple stratification schema for clinicians to identify UTI patients at increased risk of treatment failure due to antibiotic mismatch. These data are relevant to clinicians, given how common uncomplicated UTIs are, and highlight the need for clinicians to understand local resistance rates and the importance of culture-guided treatment, especially in vulnerable patients. These findings also showed that 1% of bacteria were resistant to all major classes of oral antibiotics, underscoring the need for new antibiotics to treat patients with UTIs due to resistant bacteria.