Improving UTI Detection and Antibiotic Stewardship

uti-antibiotic-stewardship-webinar-l-18-1356

Title: Improving UTI Detection and Antibiotic Stewardship

Originally Aired: Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Time: 1:00 p.m. ET

Presenter: Erin H. Graf, PhD, D(ABMM)

Unless otherwise noted, P.A.C.E.™ accreditation will expire six months after the live webinar.

Reliable Results in Less Time

Potential urinary tract infections (UTIs) are a leading cause of healthcare visits, and efforts are ongoing to provide faster, more accurate screening methods.

Two out of every three samples submitted to hospital microbiology labs are urine culture specimens. But the majority of urine screens return negative results, and plate-based cultures (the current gold standard for UTI diagnosis) can take 24 to 48 hours to grow. Automated urinalysis (UA) can provide quicker results, but low specificity and sensitivity make it an unreliable screening method.

Newer technologies, including mass spectrometry and a newly approved technique that uses laser light to detect bacterial infections, may improve our ability to detect UTIs with higher specificity. And by providing results in shorter timeframes, they help to greatly reduce administration of unnecessary empiric antibiotics and improve patient care and antibiotic stewardship.

In this P.A.C.E.-accredited Fisher Healthcare webinar, Dr. Erin Graf will provide an overview of these new approaches and review published studies that compare them to previous gold-standard methods.

Learning Objectives

This webinar will help you:

  • Describe the traditional and advanced methods for diagnosing UTIs and their impact on patient care
  • Examine how the inappropriate use of antibiotics to treat UTIs has led to increased antibiotic resistance
  • Discuss the effects of UTI diagnosis and treatment on healthcare dollars, time, and patient outcomes

Watch On Demand         Download Slides (PDF, 1.9MB)

This webinar is produced by Whitehat Communications, a provider of continuing education programs in clinical laboratory sciences that has been approved by the ASCLS P.A.C.E.™ Program. One P.A.C.E. credit hour will be provided for this complimentary, basic-level program.


Presenter

erin-graf-18-1356

Erin H. Graf, PhD, D(ABMM) 

Dr. Erin Graf is the Director of the Infectious Disease Diagnostics Laboratory at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and an Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She completed her PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania studying HIV latency, then completed an ASM-accredited postdoctoral training program in medical and public health microbiology at ARUP Laboratories and the University of Utah. Dr. Graf is board certified in medical microbiology and her research interests include sequence-based diagnostics in clinical microbiology, including the applications of next-generation sequencing and metagenomics and other emerging technologies for rapid diagnostics.