Cost-effectiveness of prophylactic antibiotic use to prevent catheter-associated urinary tract infections

Purpose We evaluate the cost-effectiveness of prophylactic antibiotic use to prevent catheter-associated urinary tract infections. Materials and methods A decision tree model was used to assess the cost-effectiveness of prophylactic antibiotics in preventing catheter-associated urinary tract infections for patients with a short-term indwelling urinary catheter. The model accounted for incidence of urinary tract infections with and without the use of prophylactic antibiotics, incidence of antibiotic-resistant urinary tract infections, as well as costs associated with diagnosis and treatment of urinary tract infections and antibiotic-resistant urinary tract infections. Costs were calculated from the health care system's perspective. We conducted one-way sensitivity analyses. Results The base case analysis showed that the use of prophylactic antibiotics is cost-saving in preventing catheter-associated urinary tract infections. The use of prophylactic antibiotics resulted in lower costs and higher quality-adjusted life-years compared with no prophylactic antibiotics. Sensitivity analyses showed that the optimal strategy changes to no prophylactic antibiotics when the incidence of urinary tract infections after prophylactic antibiotics exceeds 22% or the incidence of developing urinary tract infections without prophylactic antibiotics is less than 12%. Varying the costs of prophylactic antibiotics, urinary tract infection treatment, or antibiotic-resistant urinary tract infection treatment within a reasonable range did not change the optimal strategy. Conclusions Prophylactic antibiotic use to prevent catheter-associated urinary tract infections is cost-effective under most conditions. These results were sensitive to the likelihood of developing catheter-associated urinary tract infections with and without prophylactic antibiotics. Our results are limited to the cost-effectiveness perspective on this clinical practice.