Length of hospital stay and associated treatment costs for patients with susceptible and antibiotic-resistant <i>Salmonella</i> infections: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Abstract

The global disease burden of <i>Salmonella</i> infections in 2017 included 135 900 deaths caused by <i>Salmonella</i> Typhi and Paratyphi and 77 500 deaths caused by invasive non-typhoidal <i>Salmonella</i>, with increasing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) exacerbating morbidity, mortality and costs. The aim of our systematic review and meta-analysis is to estimate the length of hospital stay and associated treatment costs for patients with susceptible and antibiotic-resistant <i>Salmonella</i> Typhi, Paratyphi and non-typhoidal <i>Salmonella</i> infections. Systematic review and meta-analysis. We searched EMBASE, Medline/PubMed, Scopus, Hinari and LILACS databases for studies published between 1 January 2005 and 15 May 2024, with no language restrictions. We included 30 studies that reported the length of hospital stay or treatment costs for patients with susceptible or antibiotic-resistant <i>Salmonella</i> Typhi, Paratyphi and non-typhoidal <i>Salmonella</i> infections. We excluded studies with sample sizes of less than 30 patients, those focused on non-human subjects and those not reporting our outcomes of interest. Two reviewers independently screened studies and extracted data on the length of hospital stay and associated costs, with monetary values converted to 2019 USD. We aggregated data according to GDP per capita quantiles using a random-effects meta-analysis. We conducted a quality assessment using an adapted Joanna Briggs Institute tool. Patients with drug-resistant <i>Salmonella</i> infections had longer hospital stays, with an additional 0.5-2.2 days compared with drug-susceptible <i>Salmonella</i> infections. Based on our meta-analysis, the mean hospital stay for typhoidal <i>Salmonella</i> infections was 6.4 days (95% CI 4.9 to 7.8) for drug-susceptible cases and 8.4 days (95% CI 5.1 to 11.7) for resistant cases in the lowest income quartiles. While there were insufficient data to perform a pooled analysis, individual studies inferred that treatment costs for resistant typhoidal <i>Salmonella</i> infections were higher than for susceptible infections, and resistant non-typhoidal <i>Salmonella</i> infections had longer hospital stays and higher costs compared with susceptible infections. Data were scarce from high-<i>Salmonella</i>-burden countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia. Patients with antibiotic-resistant <i>Salmonella</i> infections experience a greater healthcare burden in terms of hospitalisation length and direct costs compared with those with susceptible infections. We highlight the economic burden of AMR in <i>Salmonella</i> infections and emphasise the need for preventive measures.