For a given clinical infection: Type of Infection Site Diagnosis Duration of Therapy Comments Bacteremia Gram-negative (GNB) bacteremia with removable focus (no endocarditis) 7-14 days Equal efficacy in 3 RCT Bone Osteomyelitis, adult, acute 42-56 days In patients with uncomplicated vertebral osteomyelitis, 6 weeks as efficacious as 12 weeks (Lancet 2015;385:875) Osteomyelitis, adult, chronic […]
Kinetics
R Cheat Sheet for Biostats
R provides a wide array of functions to help you with statistical analysis with R—from simple statistics to complex analyses. Several statistical functions are built into R and R packages. R statistical functions fall into several categories including central tendency and variability, relative standing, t-tests, analysis of variance and regression analysis. Base R statistical functions for […]
Antimicrobial Resistance
Microbes have a variety of mechanisms for resisting antimicrobials. Some mechanisms are intrinsic (naturally produced by the organism), some are induced by certain conditions or drugs, some are genetically acquired mutations, and others can be passed from organism to organism. The last two mechanisms are one reason why preventing the formation of resistant organisms is […]
Diabetic Foot Infections – Grades and Treatments
IDSA Diabetic Foot Guidelines Here is the IDSA/IWGDAF grading with some sample treatment. More specific treatment recommendations can be found in IDSA 2023 recommendations below. It is no longer recommended to add anaerobic therapy unless patient has ischaemic limb/necrosis/gas forming features. Patient specific factors should drive empiric choices. Grade Infection Severity Clinical Manifestations Treatment Location […]
Stewardship Intro
There are two main drivers of stewardship in hospitals: IDSA/SHEA Guidelines and the CDC Core Elements.
Basic Biostatistics
If you need to brush up on biostatistics, I recommend you buy the little biostatistics book ACCP offers (it’s cheap and it has some good practice problems in it). This is also a really good study guide and here’s a really, really simple sheet. I have more topics in biostatistics (including the “which statistical test to pick” […]
Intra-Abdominal Infections
Pathogens get more complex as you move down the GI tract: There are lots of GI words to learn and we call GI infections weird things. These are what we call infections in the various organs. IDSA Intra-abdominal Infection Guidelines Initial treatment consists of fluid resuscitation, initiation of antibiotics, source control, and microbiologic samples. Source […]
Sexually Transmitted Infections
The CDC is the best place to check for updated STI guidelines and resistance patterns. Chlamydia: Doxycycline 100 mg orally 2 times/day for 7 days (preferred) Azithromycin 1g 1 time dose (can use in pregnancy) Levofloxacin 500 mg orally once daily for 7 days Alt in preg: Amoxicillin 500 mg orally 3 times/day for 7 days […]
Urinary Tract Infections
Please note that the current UTI guidelines don’t really meet practice. IDSA is due with new guidelines and a preview was presented at ID week in 2023/ECCMID 2024. It will change the definition of complicated UTIs to include pyelonephritis, catheter-associated UTI (CAUTI), UTI with fever or other evidence of systemic or upper tract infection and […]