EPICO PROJECT. Development of educational recommendations using the DELPHI technique on invasive candidiasis in non- neutropenic critically ill adult patients.

INTRODUCTION

Although there has been an improved management of Invasive Candidiasis in the last decade, controversial issues still remain, especially in the diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.

OBJECTIVES

We sought to identify the core clinical knowledge and to achieve high level agreement recommendations required to care for critically ill adult patients with Invasive Candidiasis.

METHODS

Prospective Spanish survey reaching consensus by the Delphi technique, anonymously conducted by electronic e-mail in a first term to 25 national multidisciplinary experts in invasive fungal infections from five national scientific societies, including Intensivists, Anesthesiologists, Microbiologists, Pharmacologists and Infectious Disease Specialists, responding to 47 questions prepared by a coordination group after a strict review of the literature in the last five years. The educational objectives spanned five categories, including epidemiology, diagnostic tools, prediction rules, and treatment and de-escalation approaches. The level of agreement achieved among the panel experts in each item should exceed 75% to be selected. In a second term, after extracting recommendations from the selected items, a face to face meeting was performed where more than 80 specialists in a second round were invited to validate the preselected recommendations.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS

In the first term, 20 recommendations were preselected (Epidemiology 4, Scores 3, Diagnostic tools 4, TREATMENT 6 and De-escalation approaches 3). After the second round, the following 12 were validated:

EPIDEMIOLOGY

Think about Candidiasis in your ICU and do not forget that non-albicans species also exist. DIAGNOSTIC TOOLS: Blood cultures should be performed under suspicion every 2-3 days and, if positive, every 3 days until obtaining the first negative result. Obtain sterile fluid and tissue, if possible (direct examination of the sample is important). Use nonculture based methods of microbiological tools, whenever possible. Determination of antifungal susceptibility is mandatory. SCORES: As screening tool, use the Candida Score and determine multicolonization in high risk patients.

TREATMENT

Start early. Choose Echinocandins. Withdraw the catheter. Fundoscopy is needed. DE-ESCALATION: Only applied when knowing susceptibility determinations and after 3 days of clinical stability. The higher rate of agreement was achieved in the optimization of microbiological tools and the withdrawal of the catheter, whereas the lower rate corresponded to de-escalation therapy and the use of scores.

CONCLUSIONS

The management of invasive candidiasis in ICU patients requires the application of a broad range of knowledge and skills that our summarized in our recommendations. These recommendations may help to identify the potential patients, standardize their global management and improve their outcomes, based on the DELPHI methodology.