In-hospital mortality is significantly higher among patients infected with multidrug resistant or extensively drug-resistant pathogens, a study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases found.
Pathogens included Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Acinetobacter baumannii.
The researchers examined antimicrobial susceptibility testing results and mortality outcomes for more than 4,000 patients who visited hospitals in India in 2015.
Among patients studied, the overall mortality rate was 13.1 percent, with mortality as high as 29 percent among patients infected with A. baumannii. The patients who died were more likely to be older and admitted to the intensive care unit at the time of testing.
Patients who acquired multidrug resistant bacterial infections were 1.57 times more likely to die, compared to patients with similar susceptible infections. Patients who acquired extensively drug-resistant pathogens infections were 2.65 times more likely to die when considering age, sex, site of infection and number of coinfections, the study found.
The findings can help develop policy efforts to prioritize antibiotic resistance and inform future efforts to track the burden of antibiotic resistance in low- and middle-income countries, the researchers concluded.