General Principles of Antimicrobial Therapy
By S. Leekha, C. Terrell, R. S. Edson. Mayo Clinic proceedings, 2011
902 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Antimicrobial agents are some of the most widely, and often injudiciously, used therapeutic drugs worldwide. Important considerations when prescribing antimicrobial therapy include obtaining an accurate diagnosis of infection; understanding the difference between empiric and definitive therapy; identifying opportunities to switch to narrow-spectrum, cost-effective oral agents for the shortest duration necessary; understanding drug characteristics that are peculiar to antimicrobial agents (such as pharmacodynamics and efficacy at the site of infection); accounting for host characteristics that influence antimicrobial activity; and in turn, recognizing the adverse effects of antimicrobial agents on the host. It is also important to understand the importance of antimicrobial stewardship, to know when to consult infectious disease specialists for guidance, and to be able to identify situations when antimicrobial therapy is not needed. By following these general principles, all practicing physicians should be able to use antimicrobial agents in a responsible manner that benefits both the individual patient and the community.
Subfields: Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, Clinical Biochemistry, Pharmacology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b080ba747e5243aa3e2a47aa137b5a865d050f2e
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Citations in the corpus
- Antibiotic Use in Agriculture and Its Consequential Resistance in Environmental Sources: Potential Public Health Implications (2018, background): “Broad-spectrum antibiotics are used that cover a broad spectrum of suspected and non-susceptible pathogens responsible for the clinical presentation [144].”