How Long Should Patients Take Antibiotics?
Is it necessary to “complete the course of antibiotics” as we have extolled our patients for years? Probably not, according to authors from the United Kingdom who recently published a paper titled, “The antibiotic course has had its day.” The authors argued that there is little evidence that failing to complete an antibiotic course contributes to antibiotic resistance, and, in fact, the opposite is true. Longer antibiotic courses have been shown to put patients at risk for antibiotic resistance. They suggested that “antibiotic courses” are based on poor evidence and that patients may be better off stopping antibiotics when they feel better. There is evidence that for community-acquired pneumonia, using fever resolution as a guide to stopping antibiotics halved the average treatment duration without affecting clinical success. They acknowledged that further studies are needed, and that data suggest that longer treatment duration probably is beneficial for treating otitis media. All this is contrary to current guidelines, including those from the World Health Organization, so it is likely that this concept will take time and more research. (BMJ 2017;358:j3418.)
Researchers from the United Kingdom proclaim 'the antibiotic course has had its day.'
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