Search Tag: antibiotic
ER Overcrowding Delays Sepsis Treatment
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 American... Read more
Biomarker Guided Antibiotic Therapy: What’s New?
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
Doing the Right Thing: Antibiotics Control
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
Corticosteroids for Severe Community-Acquired Pneumonia
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
Gene Test for Rapid Sepsis Diagnosis
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
"Junk" Blood Tests Have Value
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, but the... Read more