Therapy of acute gastroenteritis: role of antibiotics.

Link to article at PubMed

Therapy of acute gastroenteritis: role of antibiotics.

Clin Microbiol Infect. 2015 Mar 10;

Authors: Zollner-Schwetz I, Krause R

Abstract
Acute infectious diarrhea remains a very common health problem even in the industrialized world. One of the dilemmas in assessing patients with acute diarrhea is deciding when to test for etiologic agents and when to initiate antimicrobial therapy. The management and therapy of acute gastroenteritis is discussed in two epidemiologic settings: community-acquired diarrhea and traveler's diarrhea. Antibiotic therapy is not required in most patients with acute gastroenteritis since the illness is usually self-limited. Antimicrobial therapy can also lead to adverse events and unnecessary treatments add to resistance development. Nevertheless, empiric antimicrobial therapy can be necessary in certain situations such as patients with febrile diarrheal illness, with fever and bloody diarrhea, symptoms persisting longer than one week or immunocompromised patients.

PMID: 25769427 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

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