PURPOSE Transient tachypnea of the newborn (TTN) is a disorder caused by the delayed clearance of fetal alveolar fluid. β-adrenergic agonists such as albuterol (salbutamol) are known to catalyze lung fluid absorption. This study examined whether inhalational salbutamol therapy could improve clinical symptoms in TTN. Additional endpoints included the diagnostic and therapeutic efficacy of salbut...

BACKGROUND Among infectious diseases, community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is the leading cause of death in the United States and is associated with a substantial economic burden to the health care system. Initiating appropriate empiric therapy can be challenging given elevated resistance rates among Streptococcus pneumoniae strains. OBJECTIVE To present current recommendations for management o...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to investigate the epidemiology and antibiotic susceptibility profiles of isolated bacterial organisms in relation to empiric treatment of neutropenic fever over a 15-year period. METHODS All patients with or at risk for febrile neutropenia and treated in the hematology ward of the Antwerp University Hospital during 1994-2008 were prospectively included. Sk...

BACKGROUND Following the emergence of penicillin and cephalosporin resistant pneumococcal meningitis in the United States, inclusion of vancomycin in empiric therapy for all suspected bacterial meningitis was recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Few data are available to evaluate this policy. AIMS To examine the management and clinical course in relation to antibiotic therapy of...

BACKGROUND A challenge in the empiric treatment of complicated urinary tract infection (cUTI) is identifying the initial appropriate antibiotic therapy (IAAT), which is associated with reduced length of stay and mortality compared with initial inappropriate antibiotic therapy (IIAT). We evaluated the cost-effectiveness of ceftolozane/tazobactam compared with piperacillin/tazobactam (one of the ...

New technologies offer rapid identification of organisms and antimicrobial resistance markers in blood cultures several hours faster than conventional methods. We sought to determine whether implementation of the Verigene® Gram-Positive Blood Culture (BC-GP) assay paired with a well-defined results reporting algorithm would lead to earlier deescalation of empiric therapy for inpatients with met...

Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) displays striking heterogeneity at the clinical, genetic, and molecular levels. Clinical prognostic models can define a population at high risk for relapse following empiric chemotherapy, although such models do not account for underlying biologic differences among tumors. Commonly observed genetic abnormalities that likely contribute to pathogenesis includ...

Cancer of unknown primary site is a common clinicopathologic syndrome representing a very heterogeneous group of patients with metastatic cancers and clinically undetectable primary tumor sites. The standard treatment for these patients for the last 15 years has been empiric "broad-spectrum" chemotherapy. In recent years, improved immunocytochemistry and the emergence of gene expression profili...