Duration of antibiotic therapy in hospitalised patients with community-acquired pneumonia

Recent guidelines suggest that duration of antibiotic therapy for hospitalized patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) can be reduced by individualising treatment based on patient's clinical response. However, the degree of application of this principle in clinical practice is unknown. Duration of therapy was analysed in patients identified from the Community-Acquired Pneumonia Organization database and evaluated with respect to severity of the disease on admission and time to clinical stability (TCS). Among the 2,003 patients enrolled, mean duration of total antibiotic therapy was 11 days. Neither the pneumonia severity index (r²=0.005) nor the CRB-65 (r²=0.004) scores were related to total duration of therapy. Duration of intravenous antibiotic therapy was related to TCS (r ²=0.198). Conversely, TCS was not related to duration of either oral (r²=0.014) or total (r²=0.02) antibiotic therapy. Neither TCS nor other characteristics were found to be significantly associated with duration of total therapy by logistic regression analysis (r²<0. 09). The individualised approach suggested by recent guidelines has not been adopted in current clinical practice. Duration of therapy is not influenced by either the severity of disease at the time of hospitalisation or the clinical response to therapy.