The European respiratory journal : official journal of the European Society for Clinical Respiratory Physiology
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Procalcitonin guidance and reduction of antibiotic use in acute respiratory tract infection.
Increasing worldwide development of antimicrobial resistance and the association of resistance development and antibiotic overuse make it necessary to seek strategies for safely reducing antibiotic use and selection pressure. In a first step, in a non-interventional study, the antibiotic prescription rates, initial procalcitonin (PCT) levels and outcome of 702 patients presenting with acute respiratory infection at 45 primary care physicians were observed. The second part was a randomised controlled non-inferiority trial comparing standard care with PCT-guided antimicrobial treatment in 550 patients in the same setting. ⋯ In the PCT group, advice was overruled in 36 cases. There was no significant difference in primary end-point when comparing the PCT group treated as advised, the overruled PCT group and the control group (9.008 versus 9.250 versus 9.000 days; p = 0.9605). A simple one-point PCT measurement for guiding decisions on antibiotic treatment is non-inferior to standard treatment in terms of safety, and effectively reduced the antibiotic treatment rate by 41.6%.