Cost-effectiveness of outpatient parenteral antibiotic therapy for children with cellulitis

OPAT has also been shown to reduce the risk of hospital-acquired infections, which are a contributory factor to antimicrobial resistance.7 In their study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Laila Ibrahim and colleagues8 assessed the cost-effectiveness of OPAT (with 50 mg/kg intravenous ceftriaxone once daily) versus standard hospital care (with 50 mg/kg intravenous flucloxacillin every 6 h) for the treatment of moderate or severe cellulitis in children. A fundamental issue associated with economic evaluation studies in children relates to how health-related quality of life is measured. The importance of including such estimates in economic evaluation studies that consider antibiotic use has been highlighted by a few studies.12,13 Although there is substantial uncertainty and several practical issues associated with the estimation of this cost, it is important that studies such as that by Ibrahim and colleagues are encouraged to account for the cost of antimicrobial resistance within economic evaluations.