BACKGROUND: A patient's prior urine cultures are often considered when choosing empiric antibiotic therapy for a suspected urinary tract infection.
We sought to evaluate how well previous urine cultures predict the identity and susceptibility of organisms in a patient's subsequent urine cultures.
METHODS: We conducted a multinational, multicenter, retrospective cohort study, including 22 019 pairs of positive urine cultures from 4351 patients across 2 healthcare systems in Toronto, Ontario, and Chicago, Illinois. We examined the probability of the same organism being identified from the same patient's positive urine culture as a function of time elapsed from the previous positive urine specimen; in cases where the same organism was identified we also examined the likelihood of the organism exhibiting the same or better antimicrobial susceptibility profile.
RESULTS: At 4-8 weeks between cultures, the correspondence in isolate identity was 57% (95% confidence interval [CI], 55%-59%), and at >32 weeks it was 49% (95% CI, 48%-50%), still greater than expected by chance (P < .001). The susceptibility profile was the same or better in 83% (95% CI, 81%-85%) of isolate pairs at 4-8 weeks, and 75% (95% CI, 73%-77%) at >32 weeks, still greater than expected by chance (P < .001). Despite high local rates of ciprofloxacin resistance in urine isolates across all patients (40%; 95% CI, 39.5%-40.5%), ciprofloxacin resistance was < 20% among patients with a prior ciprofloxacin sensitive organism and no subsequent fluoroquinolone exposure.
CONCLUSIONS: A patient's prior urine culture results are useful in predicting the identity and susceptibility of a current positive urine culture. In areas of high fluoroquinolone resistance, ciprofloxacin can be used empirically when prior urine culture results indicate a ciprofloxacin-susceptible organism and there has been no history of intervening fluoroquinolone use.
Written by:
MacFadden DR, Ridgway JP, Robicsek A, Elligsen M, Daneman N. Are you the author?
Department of Medicine, University of Toronto; Department of Medicine, University of Chicago; Department of Medicine, NorthShore University HealthSystem, Evanston, Illinois; Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre; Department of Medicine, University of Toronto; Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre Insitute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Reference: Clin Infect Dis. 2014 Nov;59(9):1265-71.
doi: 10.1093/cid/ciu588
PubMed Abstract
PMID: 25048850