Impact of a non-compulsory antifungal stewardship program on overuse and misuse of antifungal agents in a tertiary care hospital

Objectives: To assess the impact of an antifungal stewardship (AFS) program on appropriate use, consumption and acquisition costs of antifungals, and on clinical outcomes (in-hospital-mortality, in-hospital-length-of-stay). Methods: The study was conducted at a 535-bed tertiary-care hospital and had three consecutive periods. A) Observational period (10 months): all antifungal prescriptions were prospectively evaluated. B) Educational intervention to increase the awareness on proper antifungals use. C) Implementation of a non-compulsory AFS program (10 months) based on prospective audit and feedback. Interrupted time series analysis has been used to assess the impact of the intervention. Results: During the pre-interventional period 198 AF prescriptions for 147 patients, have been evaluated compared to 181 prescriptions in 138 patients during the AFS period. Statistical analysis showed a significant immediate drop of inappropriate prescriptions after intervention with a significantly declining trend thereafter, and a significant drop of the total consumption of antifungals immediately after the intervention with a significant declining trend thereafter. All-cause, in-hospital- mortality was stable during the pre-intervention period with a significant declining trend after the AFS program implementation, although no immediate intervention effect could be established. Comparison of pre-and post-interventional periods showed significant reduction in acquisition costs (-26.8%, p<0.001) but no difference regarding the total number of bed-days (107,654 vs. 102,382), and mean length of hospital-stay (5.19 vs. 4.96 days, p=NS). Conclusions: The implementation of a non-compulsory AFS program resulted in significant improvement in the quality of prescriptions and reduction in antifungals consumption and acquisitions costs, without affecting the overall in-hospital-mortality and mean in-hospital-length-of-stay. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd and International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. All rights reserved.