Tailored Approach to Evaluation and Management of Early Onset Neonatal Sepsis in a Safety-Net Teaching Hospital in Northeast Florida

Objective Early onset neonatal sepsis (EONS) remains a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in newborns in the immediate postnatal period. High empiric antibiotic use in well-appearing infants with known risk factors for sepsis led the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to revise its 2010 guidelines for the evaluation and management of EONS to avoid overuse of antibiotics. In this recent clinical report, the AAP provided a framework that outlined several evidence-based approaches for sepsis risk assessment in newborns that can be adopted by institutions based on local resources and structure. One of these approaches, the sepsis risk calculator (SRC) developed by Kaiser Permanente, has been widely validated for reducing unnecessary antibiotic exposure and blood work in infants suspected of having EONS. In order to determine the utility and safety of modifying our institution's protocol to the SRC, we implemented a two-phased approach to evaluate the use of SRC in our newborn nursery. Phase 1 utilized a retrospective review of cases with SRC superimposition. If results from Phase 1 were found to be favorable, Phase 2 initiated a trial of the SRC for a six-month period prior to complete implementation. Methods Phase 1 consisted of retrospectively applying the SRC to electronic medical records (EMR) of infants ≥ 35 weeks’ gestational age admitted to the newborn nursery with risk factors for EONS between June 2016 and May 2017. We compared actual antibiotic use as determined by the unit's EONS protocol for evaluation and management based on 2010 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and AAP guidelines to SRC-recommended antibiotic use. We used EMR to determine maternal and infant data, blood work results, and antibiotic usage as well as used daily progress notes by the clinical team to determine the clinical status of the infants retrospectively. Based on the projected reduction in blood work and antibiotics use with the retrospective superimposition of SRC on this cohort of infants and identification of our high-risk patient subset, we developed a novel, hybrid EONS protocol that we implemented and assessed throughout Phase 2, a six-month period from August 2018 to January 2019, as a prospective observational study. Results Phase 1 (SRC superimposition) demonstrated that the use of the SRC would have reduced empiric antibiotic use from 56% to 13% in the study cohort when compared with 2010 CDC/AAP guidelines. However, these same findings revealed use of the SRC would have resulted in delayed evaluation and initiation of antibiotics in 2 of 4 chorioamnionitis-exposed infants with positive blood cultures. During Phase 2 (n=302), with the implementation of our tailored approach (SRC implementation with additional blood culture in chorioamnionitis-exposed infants), 12 (4%) neonates received empiric antibiotic treatment compared to nine (3%) neonates who would have been treated per strict adherence to SRC recommendations. No neonate had culture-positive EONS. Continued use of 2010 CDC/AAP guidelines would have led to empiric antibiotic use in 38 (12.6%) infants in this cohort. Conclusion We developed a novel hybrid approach to the evaluation and management of neonates at increased risk of EONS by tailoring SRC recommendations to our safety-net population. Our stewardship effort achieved a safe and significant reduction in antibiotic usage compared to prior usage determined using CDC/AAP guidelines.