Abstract
We decided to continue antimicrobials just to be on the safe side” is a phrase one often hears when a patient with a severe disease is being treated. The words are not always those of an inexperienced physician in training, but those of a senior consultant. The flaw in the rationale behind this is the presumption that a longer course will benefit the patient more than a short course. Sometimes this holds true, but usually it does not. A spectacular example is meningococcal meningitis in which more than one prospective study shows that a single injection of long-acting penicillin, chloramphenicol, or in more recent studies, cephalosporin cures the great majority of patients [1, 2]. However, this regimen should certainly not be tried for other types of bacterial meningitis.
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Pääkkönen, M., Peltola, H. (2012). How Short Is Long Enough for Treatment of Bone and Joint Infection?. In: Curtis, N., Finn, A., Pollard, A. (eds) Hot Topics in Infection and Immunity in Children VIII. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, vol 719. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0204-6_4
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