Improving vancomycin dosing by shifting to AUC
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Note: The new vancomycin dosing guidelines have been officially released. Learn what’s changed and how they’ll impact you by reading our guide to the new vancomycin dosing changes here.
DoseMe Crunch is built on the same algorithms that underpin DoseMeRx to determine if the current clinical approach of measuring troughs as a surrogate marker for vancomycin efficacy was as effective as measuring AUC.
The Project
DoseMe Crunch partnered with a prominent Australian teaching hospital to review vancomycin dosing in a retrospective patient cohort. The objective of the review was to determine if the current clinical approach of measuring troughs as a surrogate marker for vancomycin efficacy was as effective as measuring area under the curve (AUC).
The Challenge
In 2013, the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention assigned vancomycin-resistant enterococcus to a serious threat. Annually in the US there are 66,000 enterococcus infections resulting in 1,300 deaths. With some enterococcus strains resistant to vancomycin there are few to no treatments left1.
Experimental and clinical studies suggest AUC/ MIC ratio (≥ 400) is the best parameter to predict the effectiveness of vancomycin. While most therapeutic guidelines suggest using a trough as a surrogate measure for AUC, more recent research suggests this may not be appropriate. The difficulty faced in calculating AUC is the most common reason a hospital will monitor troughs over AUC.
About DoseMe Crunch
DoseMe Crunch is built on the same algorithms that underpin DoseMeRx and our free vancomycin dosing calculator, to analyze retrospective and previously under-utilized sources of patient data to empower health services to understand and optimize medication use, benchmark clinical dosing practices and monitor medication management performance.
About DoseMeRx
DoseMeRx Vancomycin is the world’s first easy-to-use, real-time precision dosing software designed for clinicians to predict the optimal dose of medications that require therapeutic drug monitoring. If you’d like to start a 14-day free trial of our full system then click here or try out our free vancomycin dosing calculator.