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Introduction. Patients with Staphylococcus aureus bacteriuria (SABU) often have underlying invasive disease, including S. aureus bacteremia (SAB). It has been proposed that most patients with SABU should have a blood culture done to rule out SAB. A preliminary audit suggested that our local hospitals had a low rate of follow-up blood culture orders for patients with SABU. In response to this, our microbiology laboratory changed the comment appended to urine cultures with growth of S. aureus to make a more assertive link between SABU and SAB and to recommend follow-up blood cultures. Aim. We designed a retrospective quasi-experimental study to see if the change in microbiology comment wording had an effect on clinician behaviour. We hypothesized that this simple comment change to make a more assertive link between SABU and SAB would lead to an increase in follow-up blood culture orders. Methodology. We used microbiology records to identify adult patients with urine cultures positive for Staphylococcus aureus at three acute-care hospitals in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, for 1 year pre- and post-intervention. We recorded urine and blood culture results, timing, patient demographics, and in-hospital mortality. Results. A total of 243 adult patients with urine cultures with S. aureus were identified for inclusion. The primary outcome was met, as there was a significant increase in blood culture orders between the pre-intervention and post-intervention groups (66.9 % vs 80.4 %). This difference was mainly driven by an increase for emergency department and urgent care patients (30.6 % vs 63.6 %). The inpatient group had a high baseline rate of blood culture orders that did not change significantly (80.0 % vs 84.7 %). There was no significant change in detection of SAB (23.5 % vs 32.7 %) or inpatient mortality (18.0 % vs 24.7 %). Conclusion. Our study shows that a simple, purposeful comment appended to urine cultures with S. aureus leads to a significant increase in follow-up blood culture orders.

Background It is unclear whether the reporting quality of antiretroviral non-inferiority randomised controlled trials (ARV NI-RCTs) has improved since the CONSORT guideline release in 2006. The primary objective of this systematic review was assessing the methodological and reporting quality of ARV NI-RCTs. We also assessed reporting quality by funding source and publication year. Methods We searched Medline, Embase, and Cochrane Central from inception to 14 November 2022. We included NI-RCTs comparing ≥2 antiretroviral regimens used for HIV treatment or prophylaxis. We used the Cochrane Risk of Bias 2.0 (RoB 2.0) tool to assess risk of bias. Screening and data extraction were performed blinded and in duplicate. Descriptive statistics were used to summarise data; statistical tests were two-sided, with significance defined as p<0.05. The systematic review was prospectively registered (PROSPERO CRD42022328586), and not funded. Results We included 160 articles reporting 171 trials. 101 of 160 (63.1%) did not justify the non-inferiority margin (NIM) used, and 28 (17.5%) did not provide sufficient information for sample size calculation. Eighty-nine of 160 (55.6%) reported both intention-to-treat (ITT) and per-protocol (PP) analyses, while 118 (73.8%) described missing data handling. Ten of 171 (5.9%) trials reported potentially misleading results. Pharmaceutical industry-funded trials were more likely to be double blinded (28.1% vs. 10.3%, p=0.029), and to describe missing data handling (78.5% vs. 59.0%, p=0.021). Overall risk of bias was low in 96 of 160 studies (60.0%). Conclusion ARV NI-RCTs should improve NIM justification, reporting of ITT and PP analyses, and missing data handling to increase CONSORT adherence.