Are antibiotic drugs well prescribed in case of renal insufficiency? A retrospective study.

Renal insufficiency (RI) is a major complication in hospitalized patients. We aim to determinate if the severity of RI is considered for antibiotic prescriptions. A 10-month retrospective study including all in-patients of an orthopedic surgery department, based on the analysis of antibiotic prescriptions of patients with RI, was set up as follows: identification of patients with RI estimated with Cockcroft formula, classification by severity stage, and analysis of antibiotic prescriptions to be adapted to RI. About 10% of patients had RI. Among them, 54 (32%) received antibiotics (on average, 1.75 drugs per patient). Sixteen (17%) of antibiotic prescriptions required either dose adaptation or therapeutic drug monitoring. In all, only four prescriptions were adapted to renal function. In other cases, antibiotics were prescribed according to protocols for patients with normal renal function. Moreover, therapeutic drug monitoring was only performed for half of required cases and then showed values > ULN three times out of four. Creatinine clearance (CrCl) has been calculated for half of patients with RI. In practice, dosage adjustment of antibiotics is done only for patients with severe RI. Within the framework of the introduction of an electronic prescribing technology and medication order pharmaceutical review procedures, CrCl is now systematically calculated and then taken into account by both prescribers and clinical pharmacists.