Introduction: Sepsis is a serious and expensive healthcare problem, when caused by a multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria mortality and costs increase. A reduction in the time until the start of treatment improves clinical results. The objective is to perform a systematic review of economic evaluations to analyze the cost-effectiveness of diagnostic methods in sepsis and to draw lessons on the methods used to incorporate antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in these studies.
Material and methods: the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines were followed, and the Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting standards (CHEERS) checklist was used to extract the information from the texts.
Results: A total of 16 articles were found. A decision model was performed in 14. We found two ways to handle resistance while modelling: the test could identify infections caused by a resistant pathogen or resistance-related inputs, or outcomes were included (the incidence of AMR in sepsis patients, antibiotic use, and infection caused by resistant bacterial pathogens).
Conclusion: Using a diagnostic technique to detect sepsis early on is more cost-effective than standard care. Setting a direct relationship between the implementation of a testing strategy and the reduction of AMR cases, we made several assumptions about the efficacy of antibiotics and the length-of-stay of patients.
Keywords: AMR; antibiotics; diagnostic testing; sepsis; systematic review.