The antibiotic stewardship program (ASP) is a necessary part of febrile neutropenia (FN) treatment. Pharmacist-driven ASP is one of the meaningful approaches to improve the appropriateness of antibiotic usage. Our study aimed to determine role of the pharmacist in ASPs for FN patients. We prospectively studied at Thammasat University Hospital between August 2019 and April 2020. Our primary outcome was to compare the appropriate use of target antibiotics between the pharmacist-driven ASP group and the control group. The results showed 90 FN events in 66 patients. The choice of an appropriate antibiotic was significantly higher in the pharmacist-driven ASP group than the control group (88.9% vs. 51.1%, p < 0.001). Furthermore, there was greater appropriateness of the dosage regimen chosen as empirical therapy in the pharmacist-driven ASP group than in the control group (97.8% vs. 88.7%, p = 0.049) and proper duration of target antibiotics in documentation therapy (91.1% vs. 75.6%, p = 0.039). The multivariate analysis showed a pharmacist-driven ASP and infectious diseases consultation had a favorable impact on 30-day infectious diseases-related mortality in chemotherapy-induced FN patients (OR 0.058, 95%CI:0.005-0.655, p = 0.021). Our study demonstrated that pharmacist-driven ASPs could be a great opportunity to improve antibiotic appropriateness in FN patients.
Keywords: antibiotic stewardship; appropriateness; febrile neutropenia; hematology oncologic patient; pharmacist-driven.