Study design and participants
This is a post hoc analysis of the FOREST trial (clinicaltrials.gov identifier: NCT02142751), of which main results were previously published.The study protocol allowed switching to oral therapy according to the treating physician criteria, after a minimum of 4 days of IV treatment if the following conditions were fulfilled: clinical improvement, haemodynamic stability, tolerance to oral intake, and isolate susceptible to one of the permitted oral drugs. The permitted drugs were fosfomycin trometamol (3 g q48h) for patients assigned to IV fosfomycin, and cefuroxime axetil (250 mg q12h), ciprofloxacin (500 mg q12h), amoxicillin/clavulanate (500–125 mg q8h), or trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole (160–800 mg q12h) for patients assigned to IV ceftriaxone or meropenem. In addition, switch to parenteral ertapenem was allowed for patients with ceftriaxone-resistant isolates assigned to meropenem if no oral drugs were available. For this analysis, only patients in whom step-down to an oral drug was performed were included.The study was approved by the Andalusian Ethics Committee (registry: CCEIBA 0039/14); written informed consent was obtained from all participants. This report followed the STROBE recommendations (Table 