Rising antimicrobial resistance complicates management of acute bacterial skin and skin structure infections (ABSSSI). Long-acting lipoglycopeptides (LGPs) such as dalbavancin and oritavancin have extended dosing intervals and are proposed as alternatives to conventional daily intravenous therapy. The study aimed to compare clinical efficacy, safety, and economic burden of LGPs versus standard daily IV antibiotics in patients treated for skin and soft tissue infections at a single centre in Greece.
This was a retrospective, single-centre, observational study including a total of 125 patients with skin and soft tissue infections. Patients were divided into two groups: Group A (n = 62) received long-acting lipoglycopeptides (dalbavancin or oritavancin), and Group B (n = 63) received standard daily intravenous therapy, which included agents such as vancomycin, linezolid, or daptomycin. The primary outcome was clinical improvement. Secondary outcomes included length of hospital stay, adverse events, and relapse rate during a 28-day follow-up period.
The study defined clinical success as the primary endpoint, with secondary measures intended to capture resource use and safety: median length of hospital stay, incidence of adverse events, and relapse within 28 days. The abstract reports group-level results for these endpoints. Detailed methods on case selection, definitions used for clinical improvement or relapse, and statistical methods beyond reported p-values are not provided in the abstract.
Overall clinical success rates were comparable between the treatment strategies. Reported outcomes were 95.1% clinical success in the LGP group (Group A) versus 92.0% in the daily IV therapy group (Group B). The p-value for this comparison was reported as 0.11, indicating no statistically significant difference in clinical improvement between the two groups in this cohort.
Patients treated with long-acting lipoglycopeptides had a shorter median hospital stay compared with those receiving daily IV antibiotics. Median length of stay was 5.5 days in Group A versus 11.0 days in Group B, and this difference reached statistical significance (p < 0.001). The shorter hospitalisation in the LGP group was also correlated with a lower average cost of hospitalization according to the authors; specific cost figures or the cost-analysis methodology were not reported in the abstract.
The incidence of adverse events was lower among patients treated with LGPs. The abstract reports adverse event rates of 8.06% for Group A compared with 25.4% for Group B. No further breakdown of adverse event types, severity grading, or attribution to specific agents is provided in the abstract.
In this single-centre retrospective cohort from Greece, treatment of ABSSSI with long-acting lipoglycopeptides (dalbavancin, oritavancin) produced clinical success rates comparable to those achieved with conventional daily intravenous antibiotics (vancomycin, linezolid, daptomycin). The LGP group experienced a significantly shorter median hospital stay and a lower reported incidence of adverse events, and the authors report an associated reduction in average hospitalization cost. These findings support consideration of long-acting lipoglycopeptides as a safe and effective alternative to daily IV therapy for selected patients with ABSSSI, particularly when reductions in inpatient days or resource use are priorities.
The abstract does not report several potentially important details: patient demographic and comorbidity profiles, infection severity or classification, microbiological data, specific dosing regimens and timing, relapse counts or characteristics, methods for adjudicating clinical success, and the statistical adjustments used. As a retrospective observational single-centre study, the findings may be influenced by selection bias, local practice patterns, and unmeasured confounders; these limitations are typical for the study design but are not elaborated in the abstract.