Intravenous plus inhaled versus intravenous colistin monotherapy for lower respiratory tract infections: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective

To evaluate whether intravenous plus inhaled combination (IV/INHCC) compared to intravenous monotherapy (IVCM) was associated with patient outcomes and identify factors influencing study outcomes.

Methods

PubMed and Scopus were searched till November 2016. Studies were included if they evaluated adult patients with lower respiratory tract infections due to MDR/XDR Gram-negative bacteria and reported comparative mortality data (adjusted and unadjusted) for patients receiving IV/INHCC versus IVCM. Random effects meta-analyses were performed.

Results

Thirteen studies (11 retrospective, 2 prospective) were included. The overall quality of data was low to very low and characterized by the lack of adjusted data. The majority of the studies were designed to evaluate the outcome of the meta-analysis. Both IV and inhaled colistin were administered at variable doses. There was no difference in mortality between IV/INHCC and IVCM when all studies were combined (13 studies, 1115 patients, risk ratio 0.94, 95% confidence interval 0.81–1.08). Only the analysis that included studies with low-dose IV colistin showed significant difference in favor of IV/INHCC versus IVCM (0.65, 0.45–0.94).

Conclusions

Overall, low quality data suggest that IV/INHCC did not lower mortality in patients with MDR Gram negative infections unless low IV colistin dose was administered.