Impact of Selective Decontamination of the Digestive Tract on Carriage and Infection Due to Gram-Negative and Gram-Positive Bacteria: A Systematic Review of Randomised Controlled Trials
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Meta-analyses of randomised controlled trials of selective digestive decontamination have clinical outcome measures, mainly pneumonia and mortality. This meta-analysis has a microbiological endpoint and explores the impact of selective digestive decontamination on Gram-negative and Gram-positive carriage and severe infections. We searched electronic databases, Cochrane Register of Controlled Trials, previous meta-analyses and conference proceedings with no language restrictions. We included randomised controlled trials which compared the selective digestive decontamination protocol with no treatment or placebo. Three reviewers independently applied selection criteria, performed the quality assessment and extracted the data. The outcome measures were carriage and severe infection due to Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. Odds ratios were pooled with the random effect model. Fifty-four randomised controlled trials comprising 9473 patients were included; 4672 patients received selective digestive decontamination and 4801 were controls. Selective digestive decontamination significantly reduced oropharyngeal carriage (odds ratio [OR] 0.13, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.07 to 0.23), rectal carriage (OR 0.15, 95% CI 0.07 to 0.31), overall infection (OR 0.17, 95% CI 0.10 to 0.28), lower respiratory tract infection (OR 0.11, 95% CI 0.06 to 0.20) and bloodstream infection (OR 0.35, 95% CI 0.21 to 0.67) due to Gram-negative bacteria. Reduction in Gram-positive carriage was not significant. Gram-positive lower airway infections were significantly reduced (OR 0.52, 95% CI 0.34 to 0.78). Gram-positive bloodstream infections were not significantly increased (OR 1.03, 95% CI 0.75 to 1.41). The association of parenteral and enteral antimicrobials was superior to enteral antimicrobials in reducing carriage and severe infections due to Gram-negative bacteria. This meta-analysis confirms that selective digestive decontamination mainly targets Gram-negative bacteria; it does not show a significant increase in Gram-positive infection.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.023 | 0.064 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.024 | 0.034 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.008 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".