Antibiotic Use and Need for Antimicrobial Stewardship in Long-Term Care: Correction

In an article about a study identifying potential antimicrobial stewardship needs in a long-term care facility,¹ data for median days of therapy (DOT) were calculated incorrectly, which led to errors in the text and Table 1.

Table 1.

Overall Antibiotic Use and Duration of Therapy over Study Period^*

Antibiotic Use	No. of Orders	Median DOT/1000 Patient-Days (and IQR) [all data values corrected]
Route [heading corrected]
Total antibiotics, any route†	835	38.97 (29.06–43.87)
PO	594	27.63 (21.73–33.78)
IV	208	6.93 (6.09–9.62)
Total use, by class, subclass, or individual drug
Aminoglycosides	10	0.00 (0.00–0.26)
Carbapenems	2	0.00 (0.00–0.07)
Cephalosporins	251	9.82 (7.14–13.85)
First-generation	81	3.41 (2.47–5.29)
Second-generation	54	2.04 (1.40–3.27)
Third-generation	116	4.41 (3.17–5.05)
Clindamycin	15	0.30 (0.03–1.79)
Fluoroquinolones	235	9.62 (7.84–13.18)
Ciprofloxacin	127	4.89 (3.50–8.21)
Levofloxacin	105	3.72 (3.38–5.02)
Moxifloxacin	3	0.00 (0.00–0.14)
Macrolides	56	0.90 (0.38–1.40)
Metronidazole	43	1.92 (1.05–2.83)
Nitrofurantoin	39	1.90 (1.50–2.26)
Penicillins	103	4.42 (3.62–6.58)
Amoxicillin	49	1.75 (1.24–2.39)
Amoxicillin–clavulanate	7	0.11 (0.00–1.33)
Ampicillin	9	0.04 (0.00–0.35)
Cloxacillin	20	0.77 (0.22–2.28)
Penicillin	1	0.00 (0.00–0.00)
Piperacillin–tazobactam	17	0.37 (0.12–0.88)
Rifampin	4	0.00 (0.00–0.14)
Sulfamethoxazole–trimethoprim	41	2.79 (1.69–3.30)
Tetracyclines	16	0.85 (0.00–1.93)
Vancomycin IV	4	0.00 (0.00–0.17)
Vancomycin PO	16	0.37 (0.02–0.67)

DOT = days of therapy, IQR = interquartile range, IV = intravenous, PO = by mouth.

^*Study period was April 1, 2011, to March 31, 2012 (12 months), and the total number of patient-days was 162 080, with an average of 13 507 patient days per month used for monthly (12 data points, 1 data point per month) DOT/1000 patient-days statistics [addition to footnote shown in bold].

^†Routes of administration: IV, oral, gastric tube, intraperitoneal, and topical.

In the Results section, under the subheading “Antibiotic Use”, the statement about median DOT should read as follows, with the corrected values shown in bold:

The median DOT per 1000 patient-days per month was 38.97 (interquartile range [IQR] 29.06–43.87) for all antibiotic routes combined (IV, oral, gastric tube, intraperitoneal, and topical), 6.93 (IQR 6.09–9.62) for IV antibiotics, and 27.63 (IQR 21.73–33.78) for oral antibiotics.

In addition, the data columns in Table 1 reporting median DOT/1000 patient-days were incorrect. In the complete table shown here, all values in the column for median DOT/1000 patient-days (and interquartile range) have been corrected.