Mad CAP Antics: Antibiotics Within 4 Hours
March 18th, 2007 at 5:25 am by NickJack tackled a controversial topic at this month’s Journal Club — what’s the evidence for giving antibiotics within four hours for CAP patients? It’s a good question, because how well we perform at this task is a big part of how our hospitals are measured. Ineed, pneumonia antibiotic timing is one of JCAHO’s Core Measures and there are only more such metrics down the road — so we’d like to think that our funding depends on rock-solid science and proven benefits.
Well…
As Jack noted, the 4-hr policy is based primarily on four papers,
1) Kahn et al, JAMA 1990 Oct 17 264(15) 1969-73 with comments 1995-6
2) McGarvey et al, Quality Review Bulletin April 13(4) 124-30
3) Meehan, Houck et al. JAMA 1997 Dec 17 278(23) 2080-4
4) Houck et al, Arch Intern Med. 2004; 164(6):637-644.
It’s this last paper we’re going to discuss — a retrospective study derived from a national sample of medicare patients with pneumonia.
Posted in Pneumonia, Regulations, Infectious Disease, Journal Club | 3 Comments »
