Clinical Outcomes With Extended or Continuous Versus Short-term Intravenous Infusion of Carbapenems and Piperacillin/Tazobactam: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

We sought to study whether the better pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) properties of carbapenems and piperacillin/tazobactam, when the duration of infusion is longer, were associated with lower mortality. PubMed and Scopus were searched for studies reporting on patients treated with extended (≥3 hours) or continuous (24 hours) versus short-term duration (20-60 minutes) infusions of carbapenems or piperacillin/tazobactam. Fourteen studies were included (1229 patients). Mortality was lower among patients receiving extended or continuous infusion of carbapenems or piperacillin/tazobactam compared to those receiving short-term (risk ratio [RR], 0.59; 95% confidence interval [CI], .41-.83). Patients with pneumonia who received extended or continuous infusion had lower mortality than those receiving short-term infusion (RR, 0.50; 95% CI, 0.26-0.96). Data for other specific infections were not available. The available evidence from mainly nonrandomized studies suggests that extended or continuous infusion of carbapenems or piperacillin/tazobactam was associated with lower mortality. Well-designed randomized controlled trials are warranted to confirm these findings before such approaches become widely used.