I was hoping that the ECCMID 2014 session on ‘Outbreaks of MDR Gram-negative bacteria: what works and what does not work?’ would bring some answers from large, controlled studies to improve the evidence base for MDR-GNR control. I’m sorry to report that most of what was presented only served to highlight the limitations of the evidence base! There’s a bit of a Catch 22 here: in most settings, the problem lies in outbreaks, but the answers lie in large, adequately controlled cluster randomized studies in endemic settings.

• Dr Weterings from NL provided a rather bleak start to the session, reporting an outbreak of carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae in a hospital and nursing home. Environmental cultures regularly grew the outbreak strain (including a shared glucose meter) and the control measures that were effective in the hospital were more challenging to implement in the nuring home.
• Dr Gonzalez-Galan found a bundle of interventions dramatically effective to reduce the rate of endemic MDR A. baumannii. The bundle comprised surveillance, hand hygiene audit, and a checklist for environmental cleaning and contact precautions compliance. But which element of the bundle worked, and were any elements redundant?
• Dr Cohen reported an MDR A. baumannii outbreak in Israel affecting 70% of ventilated patients at its peak, which forced colistin as the empiric VAP therapy. Proper disinfection of the ventilators brought the problem under control. Similarly, an endoscoy-associated ESBL K. pneumoniae outbreak in Norway (reminescient of the NDM outbreak in Chigago) was controlled by implementing proper endoscope disinfection.
• Probably the most useful presentation of the session was from Dr Cataldo preseting a systematic review of interventions for MDR-GNR. Most studies (78% of the 86 included) were in outbreak settings, and plagued by low quality. Nonetheless, bundles were 2x more effective than single interventions (45% vs. 28%). The study struggled to determine convincingly which element of the bundles was most effective, but hand hygiene, contact precations and education came through as the pillars of effective bundles.
• Dr Dettenkofer showed that an educational intervention improved compliance with standard precautions (especially hand hygiene and to a lesser extent the inappropriate use of examination gloves for some procedures). However, ‘standard precations’ are far from standard, and it seems that you need to go further than standard precautions to control MDR-GNR.
• Dr Hussein showed that standing over healthcare workers and telling them to wash their hands improved compliance (unsurprisingly!). I venture that hospitals would only take this measure in extreme circumstances, although hand hygiene “enforcers” are not without precedent.
• Dr Perencevich reported that the Hawthrone effect tends to strike after 15 mins of observation, so hand hygiene observations should be kept short and sweet. (Incidentally, hand hygiene compliance was higher among doctors than nurses in this study; I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it this way around!)
• Dr Hansen presented data from the PROHIBIT collaborative, who found that alcohol based hand rub usage tracks the prevalence of antimicrobial resistance across Europe. However, the rate of red and yellow cards in the Euro 2008 football championships also correlates with antimicrobial resistance rates across Europe, and national consumption of chocolate correlates with the national rate of Nobel laureates: collelation doesn’t necessarily mean causation!
• Finally, Dr Langelar reported that the Dutch national healthcare inspectorate visits were effective in raising standards. But was this papering the cracks or effecting culture change?
• I am sure there were lots of good posters on this topic too, but I didn’t get very far with those. Perhaps somebody else did and would like to provide some additional information?

Dr Evelina Tacconnelli gave a thoughtful talk comparing the various international guidelines for MDR-GNR, reflecting on the recently published ESCMID version. The subject is broad, specifically in terms of which MDR-GNR, and in which setting. Guidelines for CRE in a general hospital population would look quite different to guidelines for CRAB in the ICU. Dr Tacconnelli focused on the areas of controvosy: isolation for ESBL carriers, how to prioritise limited side rooms (see useful ‘Lewisham’ isolation prioritization tool in Appendix 6 of these Irish guildelines), selective digestive decontamination, and the need for bundles. Finally, Dr Tacconnelli referenced a neat model for the effectiveness of various infection control interventions for controlling the spread CRKP. This is a clever study, and probably useful, but much like Berta (showing my age), incorrect inputs result in meaningless (or worse, misleading) outputs.

Dr Anna-Pelagia Magiarakos discussed some of the challenges of implementing guidelines, reminiscent of Dr Evonne Curren’s recent talk on a similar subject. One important point is to have some guidelines to implement! Countries lacking guidelines for the control of MDR-GNR tend to have higher rates (ECDC and PROHIBIT data). Once you have some guidelines, barriers to implementation need to be overcome: time, culture, resources, lack of understanding or belief that they will work, competence, habit, routines and “ivory tower” guidelines written by those detacted from the coal-face, to name but a few!

So are we any closer to knowing what works to control MDR-GNR following ECCMID 2014? Bundles are more effective than single interventions, but we still don’t know which elements of the bundle are most important, and this will vary by pathogen and setting. We need more studies like the commendable but complex MOSAR Lancet ID study.

You can view some other ‘Perspectives from ECCMID’ here.

Image credit: Iqbal Osman.