Increasing emergence of multidrug resistant (MDR) bacteria worldwide is now considered one of the most urgent threats to global health. The association between increase of antibiotics consumption and resistance emergence has been well documented for all patients admitted to the Intensive care unit (ICU) who received antibiotic treatment and for patients treated for ventilator associated pneumonia (VAP).
Reduction of use of antibiotics is a major point in the war against antimicrobial resistance. VAP is the first cause of healthcare-associated infections in ICU and more than half of antibiotics prescriptions in ICU are due to VAP.
Once the diagnosis of pneumonia under MV has been made, initiation of antibiotic treatment must be prompt but there is no clear consensus on its duration. In the case of a good clinical response to treatment, it has been shown in some situations that short course antibiotics can be effective without side effects and antimicrobial stewardship initiatives can be applied successfully and effectively to the management of Community Acquired Pneumonia (CAP).
The hypothesis is that an antimicrobial stewardship is possible in the treatment of VAP with no increase in the rate of all-cause mortality, treatment failure or occurrence of new episode of pneumonia.
The objective is to investigate whether an antimicrobial stewardship for VAP based on daily assessment of clinical cure and antimicrobial discontinuation, if it is obtained, would be non-inferior in terms of all-cause mortality, treatment failure or occurrence of new episode of pneumonia.
This study will be a prospective, national multicenter (31 centers), phase III, comparative randomized (1:1), single-blinded clinical trial comparing two management strategies of treatment of pneumonia on the basis of two parallel arms:
Experimental group: Antimicrobial stewardship based on daily clinical assessment of clinical cure.
Control group: standard management: duration of appropriate antibiotic therapy for confirmed VAP according to guidelines.
Diagnosis of microbiologically confirmed of first episode of VAP
Initial appropriate antibiotic therapy (whether empirical or not)
Written informed consent from the patient or a legal representative if appropriate. If absence of a legal representative the patient may be included in emergency procedure
Patient under MV>48 hours at the time of the microbiological sampling
Patient under selective decontamination of the digestive tract
Duration of antibiotic therapy prior to inclusion > 72h (for any reason) appropriate to the germs found in the bacterial documentation of the first episode of VAP
Inclusion in another interventional study concerning antimicrobial strategies
Moribund (IGS II>80)