Introduction: Clinically, doripenem therapy for nosocomial pneumonia remains a serious concern. The purpose of this meta-analysis was to explore the efficacy and the safety of doripenem therapy for nosocomial pneumonia in comparison with other antimicrobial agents.
Methods: Studies were eligible for inclusion only if they directly compared the clinical effectiveness of doripenem and other antimicrobial agent therapies for nosocomial pneumonia in adult patients between 1 January 2000 and 30 April 2022. All studies were included if they reported one or more of the following outcomes: clinical cure rate, microbiological cure rate, all-cause mortality, and adverse events.
Results: Six randomized controlled trials and three retrospective studies were included in the meta-analysis. There were 952 patients in the doripenem group and 1183 patients in the comparator group. The comparator antimicrobial agents included imipenem/cilastatin, meropenem, and piperacillin/tazobactam. Seven studies had a high risk of bias. Doripenem therapy for nosocomial pneumonia had a microbiological cure rate, a clinical cure rate, an all-cause mortality, and adverse events similar to those of comparators.
Conclusions: The efficacy and the safety of doripenem therapy for nosocomial pneumonia were comparable with those of comparators. Randomized controlled trials are needed to confirm the role of doripenem in nosocomial pneumonia therapy.
Keywords: Pseudomonas aeruginosa; doripenem; hospital-acquired pneumonia; ventilator-associated pneumonia.