Study on association between early antibiotic administration from emergency department and in hospital stay

Objective : We aimed to study the association of early antibiotic administration with reduced length of stay (LOS) at hospital.

Methodology: We analyzed data from an emergency department register that had patient details that were brought to the emergency department (ER). We divided the patients into 3 groups depending upon the time they have received the antibiotic i.e, group who have received in one hour or less, between 1-3 hours and in 3 hours or more. Bonferroni test was performed for pair wise comparison.

Results: We had 42 patients who received the antibiotic within 1 hour or less, 89 within 1-3 hours and 22 patients who received it in 3 hours or more. The average age of our patients was 57.13 ± 16.4, with 70.5% males and 29.41% females. The mean days to stay for ≤ 1 hour is 7.21 ±2.38 days, for 1-3 hours it is 9.31±6.04 and for ≥ 3 hour it is 11.45 ±5.01 days. The difference is statistically significant for ≤1 hour and ≥ 3 hour (p value=0.006).
The mean days to stay for 1-3 hour and ≥ 3 hour is not statistically significant (p value=0.248)

Conclusion: Antibiotic administration within three hours from the time of ER arrival was significantly associated with improved outcomes, including in-hospital survival, reversal of organ failure and shorter hospital LOS