Treatment of Gram-negative pneumonia in the critical care setting: is the beta-lactam antibiotic backbone broken beyond repair?

ABSTRACT: Beta-lactam antibiotics form the backbone of treatment for Gram-negative pneumonia in mechanically ventilated patients in the intensive care unit. However, this beta-lactam antibiotic backbone is increasingly under pressure from emerging resistance across all geographical regions, and health-care professionals in many countries are rapidly running out of effective treatment options. Even in regions that currently have only low levels of resistance, the effects of globalization are likely to increase local pressures on the beta-lactam antibiotic backbone in the near future. Therefore, clinicians are increasingly faced with a difficult balancing act: the need to prescribe adequate and appropriate antibiotic therapy while reducing the emergence of resistance and the overuse of antibiotics. In

SUBMITTER: Bassetti M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4731981 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature