Use what you have: leveraging microbiology support to develop a cumulative antibiotic susceptibility report for antimicrobial stewardship at a district hospital in Ghana.

Background: Antibiograms provide effective support for empirical prescribing and antimicrobial stewardship programmes (ASPs). In low-resource settings, microbiology systems to develop antibiograms may be rudimentary or entirely lacking, which may place such facilities at a disadvantage. Notwithstanding this, facilities should use what they have to support ASPs to inform evidence-based antibiotic use. We report how an antibiogram was developed at a district hospital in Ghana to support its ASP.

Methods: This was a retrospective analysis of antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) results from the University Hospital, KNUST from January to December 2021. Data were exported from the hospital's laboratory information system to Microsoft Excel (Version 2013). IBM SPSS Statistics (Version 25) and Epi Info™ Version 7 were used for statistical analyses.

Results: Overall, 1949 cultures were performed, 392 (20.1%) growing bacterial pathogens. Per the CLSI M39-A4 standard guidelines for antibiograms, only 360 of the bacterial isolates were used for the analyses. The majority of isolates were from urine (187; 51.9%). Among the Gram-negative bacteria, there was low susceptibility to amoxicillin/clavulanic acid (28%), cephalosporins (11%-35%) and meropenem (21%), but high susceptibility to amikacin (96%) and levofloxacin (81%). Low susceptibility of Gram-positive isolates to amoxicillin/clavulanic acid (34%), meropenem (34%) and penicillins (27%-35%) was also recorded, but high susceptibility to ciprofloxacin (80%), gentamicin (79%) and vancomycin (76%).

Conclusion: High levels of bacterial resistance to cephalosporins and meropenem in the antibiogram were reported. This antibiogram highlighted the urgent need for pragmatic steps to curb antibiotic resistance through ASPs using strategies that positively improve clinicians' knowledge and prescribing practices.