ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: Numerous cases of gentamicin underdosing have been described in the literature in the context of sepsis and septic shock in anaesthesia-intensive care units (ICU). A survey of clinical practice was conducted with the aim to rationalise the use of gentamicin in the unit. The secondary objective was to propose a corrective formula for adjusting individual dosage. METHODS: A single-centre survey was used to determine the initial dose of gentamicin administered, in an anaesthesia-ICU, during the first hours of sepsis/septic shock. An initial retrospective phase allowed focusing on the points of improvement in terms of prescription. A second prospective phase enabled the evaluation of benefits following the implemented changes. RESULTS: Fifty-one patients were included during the retrospective phase (2014-2015) and 28 patients during the prospective phase (2016-2017). Out-of-guideline prescriptions significantly decreased between these two study periods (i.e., pulmonary infections decreased from 70.5% to 18%, p<0.001) and the mean±standard deviation administered dosage increased from 7.3±1.2 mg kg-1 to 9.5±1.5 mg kg-1 (p<0.001). Nevertheless, the proportion of Cmax (peak plasma concentration) ≥30 mg L-1 and the mean Cmax did not change significantly. A significant association (p<0.05) was found between Cmax, body mass index, haematocrit and creatinine, enabling a corrective formula to be proposed. CONCLUSION: The present study allowed improvement in gentamicin prescription in an anaesthesia-ICU. A Cmax ≥30 mg L-1 remains difficult to achieve, but a Cmax ≥16 mg L-1 could be considered relevant for community infections and would be more attainable. A corrective formula could be used to adjust the dosage.
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTIONPredicting the number of Covid-19 patients in the Intensive Care Units (ICU) could be useful to avoid the breaking point. We attempted to deduce a formula in order to model the number of the ICU patients in France from the official data and patient turnover in the ICU. METHODSThe Covid-19 ICU patient turnover was calculated using a recurrence relation from the internal data provided by Hospices Civils de Lyon. The number of new Covid-19 cases detected daily was modelized to fit with the last known data in France and extrapolated for the coming days using two scenarios following the existing data in China (best scenario) and Italy (worst scenario). The number of daily admissions in ICU was calculated as the sum of 13.7% of the new Covid-19 cases detected on a given day and 7.8% of the average of the total new Covid-19 cases recorded in the last week. Approximately 39.7% of patients admitted to the ICU were non-intubated with an average ICU length of stay of 4 days. Conversely, 60.3% of patients were intubated and for those who died among them (14.44%) the ICU length of stay was of 4 days for 78.3% of them and of 15 days for 21.7% of them. For the intubated patients that were discharged alive, the ICU length of stay was of 6 days for 44.4% of them and of 20 days for 55.6% of them. RESULTSWe predict a peak of 7072 - 8043 patients for the overall French territory. CONCUSIONDespite a simplified mathematical model, the strength of our study is a narrow possible range of predicted total number of ICU patients.
