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Outbreak scenario exercise

Outbreak Scenario Exercise
Television interviewer asking questions to a hospital representative with a protestor in the background.
© UoD and BSAC
Here is another short exercise. Look at the data on use of meropenem or third generation cephalosporins in Dunswood Hospital featured in the outbreak scenario.

This chart which has been created to show a fictitious set of data for Dunswood Hospital. The title is Dunswood Hospital "Use of Meropenem". The y axis shows the number of DDD/1000patients/day and the x axis the years 2011, 2012,2013, 2014. The graph plots data showing an upward trend in the use of Meropenem in 2011 as 365 DDD/1000patients/day, just over 380 in 2012, 390 in 2013 and just over 410 in 2014

What does this show?

Could this be contributing to the current outbreak?

What would you do with this data?

Post your thoughts in the comments section

Here is a free Antimicrobial Consumption Tool which is designed for the calculation of data on antibiotic use into DDD. If you have your own data on antibiotic use, you may want to try the application out (available for Windows only).

A good resource for further reading is the Introduction to Drug Utilization Research from the WHO.

© UoD and BSAC
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Antimicrobial Stewardship: Managing Antibiotic Resistance

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