Among various risk factors for death among critically ill patients with serious infection, inappropriate antimicrobial therapy is an important factor that clinicians can modify directly. The presence of multidrug-resistant bacteria is the primary reason that patients with ventilator-associated pneumonia receive inappropriate antimicrobial therapy. Empirical antimicrobial therapy for ventilator-...

Community acquired pneumonia (CAP) represents the most common cause of infection-related morbidity and mortality worldwide. Appropriate treatment of CAP is challenging and sometimes limited by the availability to obtain rapid and timely identification of the etiologic agent in order to initiate or deescalate the correct antimicrobial therapy. As a consequence, prescribers frequently select empi...

Background. Overutilization of antimicrobial therapy places patients at risk for harm and contributes to antimicrobial resistance and escalating healthcare costs. Focusing on dual or redundant antimicrobial therapy is one recommended strategy to reduce overutilization and its attendant effects on patient safety and hospital costs. Design. This cohort study explored the incidence and economic im...

Successful treatment of many musculoskeletal infections often requires an extended course of outpatient antimicrobial therapy, much of which is administered parenterally outside the hospital under the guidance of an infectious disease specialist. Delivery of outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT) may occur in physicians' offices, ambulatory infusion centers, or hospital clinics but ...

The vast majority of antimicrobial agents are prescribed empirically — therapy that is initiated without knowledge of the specific infecting pathogen, but generally based on several important variables. These include site and type of infection, presenting symptoms, patient history and local antimicrobial resistance patterns. Additional reasons for empiric prescription include relieving symptoms...