Aggressive versus conservative initiation of antibiotics

摘要

Tjasa Hranjec and colleagues investigated the effect of aggressive versus conservative antimicrobial treatment in critically ill surgical patients and reported that patients receiving early empirical therapy had a higher mortality rate than patients receiving antimicrobial treatment after identification of the best possible antimicrobial therapy. These results are in contrast with previous studies demonstrating that a delay in initiation of therapy is associated with high mortality, and therefore question the recommendations in widely accepted guidelines.