TY - CHAP M1 - Book, Section TI - Empirical Treatment of Bacterial Infections A1 - Metjian, Talene A. A1 - Gerber, Jeffrey S. A2 - Zaoutis, Lisa B. A2 - Chiang, Vincent W. PY - 2017 T2 - Comprehensive Pediatric Hospital Medicine, 2e AB - The initiation of antibiotic therapy is a common challenge for clinicians caring for hospitalized patients. Many factors influence the choice of whether to start antibiotics, when to start, and which agent or agents to employ. Often the decision to initiate antibiotics and to select appropriate antibiotic agents happens before confirmation of the presence of a treatable infection and before its precise location, severity, and specific infectious cause is identified. Some of the factors to consider include the likelihood of a treatable infection actually being present, the risks of an untreated infection, the odds of predicting the correct pathogen involved, the chances of resolution without antibiotic therapy, and the need to identify the organism definitively. Other antibiotic-related factors include the toxicity profile and the pharmacodynamic parameters of the drug. SN - PB - McGraw-Hill Education CY - New York, NY Y2 - 2024/03/28 UR - accesspediatrics.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1146118028 ER -