Search Tag: antibiotic
2022 14 Oct
Infections occur frequently in critically ill patients in the ICU. They may be the reason for admission and could also be due to immunosuppression associated with critical illness. Antibiotics are essential tools for treating both common and complex infections. It is recommended that antibiotics should be administered as soon as possible once an infection...Read more
2017 22 May
Prompt antibiotic initiation is associated with improved mortality in sepsis and septic shock. However, new research shows that patients with sepsis, a life-threatening complication of an infection, had delays approaching one hour in being given antibiotics when seen in emergency rooms that were overcrowded. The findings were presented at the 2017...Read more
2016 11 Mar
The aim of the present review is to summarise the current evidence for the use of biomarkers in facilitating therapeutic decision-making by guiding and tailoring the prescription and the duration of antibiotic therapy. The main benefits of this strategy are a potential reduction of antibiotics overuse in critically ill patients. Overuse of antibiotics...Read more
2016 16 Feb
A new study shows that behavioural interventions that target the competitive spirits and desire of doctors to strengthen their reputations can motivate them to reduce unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions. The study is published in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Principal investigator and senior author Jason Doctor, Director of Health...Read more
2015 17 Feb
A new study published in JAMA shows that the use of the corticosteroid methylprednisolone compared with placebo reduced treatment failure for patients with severe community-acquired pneumonia and high initial inflammatory response. "If replicated, these findings would support the use of corticosteroids as adjunctive treatment in this clinical population,”...Read more
2014 24 Oct
Researchers from the University of British Columbia (BC, Canada) have developed a new test that could help clinicians predict within an hour if a patient will develop severe sepsis. Currently, a typical diagnosis takes about 24 to 48 hours but with this new test, doctors could start treating patients almost immediately, according to the study published...Read more
2014 11 Sep
There is no doubt that blood culture isolates are the cornerstone of adequate antibiotic treatment but it is a fact that many blood cultures are contaminated with bacteria residing on the skin. The most common of these contaminants are coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS). Contaminated cultures are generally discarded and disregarded,...Read more