Introduction: Infections attributed to multidrug-resistant organisms have resulted in a significant clinical burden, high mortality, and excessive costs. Identifying the most appropriate and efficacious treatments will aid in reducing these burdens. Imipenem/cilastatin + relebactam (I/R) is used against multidrug-resistant infections providing an alternative option which may support patients where traditional treatments are no longer effective. Objective: The objective was to evaluate the efficacy of I/R for complicated urinary tract infections, complicated intra-abdominal infections, hospital-acquired bacterial pneumonia, and ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia, based on data aggregated from randomized controlled trials. Method: Two systematic literature reviews were conducted to include randomized controlled trials which aligned with the inclusion criteria reporting on the efficacy of I/R against placebo or other comparators such as piperacillin/tazobactam or colistin. The outcomes of interest were mortality, clinical response, and microbiological response. Results: The results found reduced mortality and comparable clinical and microbiological response with I/R versus its comparators. I/R displayed the largest favorable clinical and microbiological responses within high-risk populations, including those with severe renal impairment when compared with piperacillin/tazobactam. Conclusions: These findings support the efficacy of I/R for key Gram-negative infections, particularly within vulnerable patient populations. Despite the favorable outcomes reported, there is a need for further real-world evidence generation to support the efficacy of I/R to aid in standardizing treatment guidelines and reducing the clinical and economic burden associated with multidrug-resistant bacterial infections.
Shields et al. (Thu,) studied this question.