Identifying HABP/VABP Priorities

Hospital-acquired bacterial pneumonia (HABP) and ventilator-acquired bacterial pneumonia (VABP) continue to remain challenging infections for clinicians to treat.

For those patients diagnosed with VABP, their conditions can prolong their hospital stays. And for those patients in the ICU, VABP patients can mean not only longer hospitalization, but wider antibiotic coverage, more respiratory therapy, and more tests such as x-rays and labs.

For those patients diagnosed with HABP, they may not be considered as severe as VABP, but there is a high rate of complications. For both subsets of patients, HABP/VABP can also see multidrug resistance.

Overall, there are several prevalent pathogens of HABP/VABP including: S aureus, P aeruginosa, Klebsiella species, E coli, Acinetobacter species, and Enterobacter species, which consistently cause up to 80% of all HABP or VABP episodes.

Christian Sandrock, MD, MPH, FCCP and his staff at UC Davis Medical Center are looking at risk profiles and considering existing treatment guidelines when they are seeing these patients.

Sandrock who is vice chair for Quality and Safety; division vice chief of Internal Medicine; director of Critical Care; and professor of Medicine at UC Davis sat down with Contagion as part of an ongoing short series of video interviews to discuss these pathogens and infections. In the far-ranging interview, Sandrock discusses how his institution is handling treatment, protocols on HABP/VABP, and his perspective on the therapy pipeline.

In this episode, Sandrock discusses criteria and risk factors for antimicrobial treatment for HABP/VABP.