When once is not enough – further evidence of procalcitonin-guided antibiotic stewardship

doi:10.1186/cc7935

Critical Care

Volume 13
Issue 4

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Commentary

When once is not enough – further evidence of procalcitonin-guided antibiotic stewardship

Stephan Harbarth¹ , Werner C Albrich² and Beat Müller²

¹Infection Control Program, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Geneva Hospitals and Medical School, CH-1211 Geneva 14, Switzerland

²Department of Internal Medicine, Kantonsspital Aarau, CH-5001 Aarau, Switzerland

author email corresponding author email

Critical Care 2009, 13:165doi:10.1186/cc7935


Published:	13 July 2009

See related research by Hochreiter et al., http://ccforum.com/content/13/3/R83

Abstract

Every day, critical care physicians around the world face the same challenge of the optimal timing of antimicrobial administration: when to start and when to stop antibiotics. Duration of antibiotic therapy for sepsis is mostly based on expert opinion, but its reduction is arguably the most promising approach to decrease emergence and selection of antibiotic resistance. The study by Hochreiter and colleagues presents another piece of evidence suggesting that procalcitonin may indeed be a valuable diagnostic parameter to guide antibiotic treatment duration, despite the ongoing controversy about the diagnostic accuracy of pro-calcitonin.