The American Thoracic Society and the Infectious Diseases Society of America jointly published the new guidelines in October issue of American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. A 15-member panel produced the guideline.
The guidelines offer clinical recommendations on treatment decisions for patients with community acquired pneumonia. The new guidelines differ from the previous ones 2007 in several ways, including additional recommendations for disease management. These include recommending more microscopic studies of respiratory tract samples in some community acquired patients. This aims to avoid unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions for drug-resistant bacteria.
“Not only has there been new data in the past decade, but there is now a strong national and international focus on antibiotic stewardship,” said Grant Waterer, MBBS, PhD, co-chair of the guideline committee and a professor of medicine at the University of Western Australia. “It was time to update the guideline so that clinicians could be certain they were still practicing evidence-based care.”
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