Empiric treatment of ambulatory community-acquired pneumonia: always include treatment for atypical agents

Empiric treatment of community-acquired pneumonia with fluoroquinolones, and delays in the treatment of tuberculosis.

Fluoroquinolones, which are widely used to treat community-acquired pneumonia, also have excellent in vitro activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. A retrospective cohort study was conducted among adults with culture-confirmed tuberculosis to assess the effect of empiric fluoroquinolone therapy on delays in the treatment of tuberculosis. Sixteen (48%) of 33 patients received fluoroquinolon...

Treatment of community-acquired pneumonia.

Cefepime versus Ceftriaxone for Empiric Treatment of Hospitalized Patients with Community-Acquired Pneumonia

Effective empiric treatment of pneumonia requires antibiotic coverage against gram-negative and grampositive pathogens, including drug-resistant isolates. We compared the safety and efficacy of intravenous (i.v.) cefepime (2 g administered every 12 h) to those of i.v. ceftriaxone (1 g administered every 12 h) for the empiric treatment of hospitalized patients with community-acquired pneumonia. ...

Comparative effectiveness of empiric antibiotics for community-acquired pneumonia.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Narrow-spectrum antibiotics are recommended as the first-line agent for children hospitalized with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). There is little scientific evidence to support that this consensus-based recommendation is as effective as the more commonly used broad-spectrum antibiotics. The objective was to compare the effectiveness of empiric treatment with narrow...

Empiric therapy of community-acquired pneumonia: guidelines for the perplexed?

This article discusses the key clinical aspects of empiric therapy of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). Antibiotic selection, severity of CAP, single vs multiple pathogens, pharmacokinetic considerations, antibiotic resistance, i.v. vs oral antibiotic therapy for CAP, oral therapy for non-ICU hospitalized patients with CAP, beta-lactams, macrolides, ketolides, doxycycline, respiratory quinolo...