When treating patients with hospital-acquired or ventilator-acquired pneumonia, providers should consider keeping the maximum course of antibiotic treatment to seven days, according to new guidelines from the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American Thoracic Society.
About 10 percent of patients using a ventilator get ventilator-associated pneumonia, which is fatal about 13 percent of the time, according to the IDSA. Patients with ventilator-associated pneumonia experience longer hospital stays and have to remain on ventilators for longer.
The primary differences between the new guidelines and the 2005 edition are use of a new methodology for evaluating available clinical evidence; removal of healthcare-associated pneumonia from inclusion with hospital-acquired and ventilator acquired pneumonia; and the recommendation that individual hospitals use their best judgment to choose the optimal course of antibiotics, erring on the side of de-escalating antibiotic treatment and short-course treatments. This should be done with an emphasis on minimizing patient exposure to unnecessary antibiotics and contributing to antibiotic resistance.
Sign up for our FREE E-Weekly for more coverage like this sent to your inbox!
"Once clinicians are updated regularly on what bugs are causing VAP and HAP in their hospitals as well as their sensitivities to specific antibiotics, they can choose the most effective treatment," Andre C. Kalil, MD, lead author of the guidelines, professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and director of the Transplant Infectious Diseases Program at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, said in a statement. "This helps individualize care, ensuring patients will be treated with the correct antibiotic as soon as possible."
The updated guidelines are published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.