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ABSTRACT Pseudomonas aeruginosa represents a major cause of health care-associated infections, and inappropriate initial antimicrobial therapy is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. The International Network for Optimal Resistance Monitoring (INFORM) program monitors the in vitro activity of ceftazidime-avibactam and many comparator agents. We evaluated the antimicrobial susceptibility of 7,452 P. aeruginosa isolates collected from 79 U.S. medical centers in 2012 to 2015. The isolates were collected and tested consecutively for susceptibility by broth microdilution method. Infection types included mainly pneumonia (50.5%), skin and skin structure (24.0%), urinary tract (7.8%), and bloodstream (7.7%) infections. The only compounds with >90% susceptibility rates were colistin (MIC 50/90 , 1/2 mg/liter, respectively; 99.4% susceptible), ceftazidime-avibactam (MIC 50/90 , 2/4 mg/liter, respectively; 97.0% susceptible), and amikacin (MIC 50/90 , 2/8 mg/liter, respectively; 97.0/93.0% susceptible CLSI/EUCAST, respectively). The addition of avibactam to ceftazidime increased the percentage of susceptible P. aeruginosa isolates from 84.3% to 97.0%. Multidrug resistance (MDR) and extensive drug resistance (XDR) phenotypes were observed among 1,151 (15.4%) and 698 (9.4%) isolates, respectively, and ceftazidime-avibactam inhibited 82.1 and 75.8% of these isolates at ≤8 mg/liter, respectively. High rates of cross-resistance were observed with ceftazidime, meropenem, and piperacillin-tazobactam, whereas ceftazidime-avibactam retained activity against isolates nonsusceptible to ceftazidime (81.0% susceptible), meropenem (86.2% susceptible), and piperacillin-tazobactam (85.4% susceptible), as well as isolates nonsusceptible to these three β-lactams (71.2% susceptible). The only antimicrobial combinations that provided a better overall anti- Pseudomonas coverage than ceftazidime-avibactam (97.0% susceptibility rate) were those including amikacin (97.0 to 98.4% coverage). Susceptibility rates remained stable during the study period. The results of this investigation highlight the challenge of optimizing empirical antimicrobial therapy for P. aeruginosa infections.
Sader et al. (Tue,) studied this question.