Use of VetCompass Australia data to estimate body weight for antimicrobial stewardship in Australian dogs

Evaluation of the appropriateness of antimicrobial use requiresmultiple data elements, including the indication for treatment,duration of therapy and dose of the drug used. To calculate thedose the volume of active ingredient and animal weight arerequired. Dog weight is frequently missing from the electronicmedical records from the VetCompass Australia database. Elec-tronic clinical records were extracted from VetCompass Australiafor the top 10 breeds of dogs in the database where weight, ageand sex were recorded (n = 72,089). The mean weight for ageand sex was calculated for each breed. In a second cohort, ani-mals aged greater than 1 year that had weight recorded and wereprescribed an antimicrobial were extracted (n = 69,683). The totalmilligrams of antimicrobial administered were extracted usingpreviously described tools. The true weight and the breed/sex/age average were then used to assess the appropriateness of anti-microbial doses. Antimicrobial doses were compared to those rec-ommended in the Australian Veterinary Prescribing Guidelinesfrom the University of Melbourne. There were 46,172 appropriatedoses of antimicrobials in cohort 2 (66% appropriateness). Thetrue positive rate for VetCompass Australia approximated weightwas 82%. The true negative rate for VetCompass Australia approx-imated weight was 78%. Subgroup mean imputation is a reason-ably accurate method of dealing with missing data fordetermining the appropriateness of antimicrobial dose for popu-lation level studies.

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Hardefeldt, L., Li, K. and Bailey, K., Use of VetCompass Australia data to estimate body weight for antimicrobial stewardship in Australian dogs. Australian Veterinary Journal, 2026, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1111/avj.70099