Correlation between antibiotic resistance and clinical outcome of anaerobic infections; mini-review

In anaerobic infections, the relationship between clinical failure and antibiotic resistance is difficult to demonstrate, especially in mixed anaerobic-aerobic infections. Single isolates of anaerobes in cases of bacteraemia revealed that treatment failures were due to inappropriate therapy. We review here cases, where the empiric treatment was unsuccessful due to resistance of anaerobic bacteria to the adminis-tered agents and where the change of the antibiotic allowed the patients to be cured. Many therapeutic failures could be linked to the lack of timely detection of resistance, including heteroresistance of the anaerobes. Disk diffusion or Etest methodology may be suitable, at least for rapidly growing anaerobes, to detect both resistance and heteroresistance to antibiotics widely used for empirical therapy. (c) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

In anaerobic infections, particularly in mixed infections, the relationship between clinical failure and antibiotic resistance is difficult to demonstrate. Many therapeutic failures could be linked to the lack of timely detection of resistance, including heteroresistance of anaerobes.