Why do so many antibiotics get prescribed for a week? Is there something special about 7 days of therapy? Would we ever use the number 7 in any other context? The courses of antibiotics we prescribe are clearly not scientific, which has always made the lecture that patients receive about […]
antibiotics
17 posts
Another month, another set of articles. Perhaps some are useful. Perhaps some will guide your practice. At least one should completely blow your mind.
Another month, another set of articles. Some clinically relevant. Some just thought provoking. One is more than 100 years old. Yes, I look everywhere for these papers. The BroomeDocs podcast version can be found here: https://broomedocs.com/2024/10/first10em-journal-club-october-2024/
It’s that time again. A roundup of the most interesting emergency medicine articles I have read in the last few months.
My morning ritual of reading articles over coffee has transformed somewhat, such that there is a lot more playing with an infant, and a lot less evidence based medicine. Although the coffee isn’t going anywhere, it is usually cold by the time I have a free moment to get to […]
Doctors prescribe a lot of antibiotics for viral illness. We shouldn’t do that. Antibiotics don’t work for viral illnesses, but for some reason many doctors can’t seem to help themselves. Because of all this inappropriate prescribing, someone came up with the (not so) brilliant idea of delayed antibiotic prescriptions, in […]
We have discussed evidence that antibiotics may not help diverticulitis multiple times on this blog (for example here and here). After another negative RCT, it is time to tackle the difficult question of how much evidence we need to overturn long standing medical practices.
Either a patient needs antibiotics or they don’t. If a patient needs antibiotics, a delayed prescription is harmful. If a patient doesn’t need antibiotics, a delayed prescription is harmful. Thus, delayed antibiotics are dumb.
There are a lot of recurrent themes in this month’s edition of the articles of the month (which has clearly shifted from being a monthly to a bimonthly publication). Podcast over on BroomeDocs.