Enhancing antibiotic stewardship by tackling “spurious” penicillin allergy

We describe lessons learnt from recent studies regarding possible reasons contributing to an inaccurate label of PenA as well as propose a concerted multidisciplinary approach to address this important public health problem. Given the unmet need for allergy services in the UK and several other countries and knowledge gaps regarding PenA amongst healthcare professionals, we describe the potential role for a computerized clinical decision support system to enable non‐specialists rapidly identify and de‐label “low‐risk” hospitalized patients with a label of PenA thereby obviating the need for allergy tests. This approach however needs rigorous evaluation for feasibility, safety, patient and physician acceptability, cost‐effectiveness and its compatibility with information technology systems currently employed in the health service.

Source: Clinical and Experimental Allergy - October 27, 2017 Category: Allergy & Immunology Authors: M. T. Krishna, A. P. Huissoon, M. Li, A. Richter, D. G. Pillay, D. Sambanthan, S. C. Raman, S. Nasser, S. A. Misbah Tags: REVIEW ARTICLE Source Type: research