25 research outputs found
Early discontinuation of empirical antibiotic treatment in neutropenic patients with acute myeloid leukaemia and high-risk myelodysplastic syndrome
Introduction: Current guidelines advocate empirical antibiotic treatment (EAT) in haematological patients with febrile neutropenia. However, the optimal duration of EAT is unknown. In 2011, we have introduced a protocol, promoting discontinuation of carbapenems as EAT after 3 days in most patients and discouraging the standard use of vancomycin. This study assesses the effect of introducing this protocol on carbapenem and vancomycin use in high-risk haematological patients and its safety. Methods: A retrospective before-after study was performed comparing a cohort from 2007 to 2011 (period I, before restrictive EAT use) with a cohort from 2011 to 2014 (period II, restrictive EAT use). Neutropenic episodes related to chemotherapy or stem cell transplantation (SCT) in patients with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) or high-risk myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) were analysed. The primary outcome was the use of carbapenems and vancomycin as EAT during neutropenia, expressed as days of therapy (DOT)/100 neutropenic days and analysed with interrupted time series (ITS). Also the use of other antibiotics was analysed. Safety measurements included 30-day mortality, ICU admittance within 30 days after start of EAT and positive blood cultures with carbapenem-susceptible microorganisms. Results: Three hundred sixty-two neutropenic episodes with a median duration of 18 days were analysed, involving 201 patients. ITS analysis showed decreased carbapenem use with a step change of - 16.1 DOT/100 neutropenic days (95% CI - 26.77 to - 1.39) and an overall reduction of 21.6% (8.7 DOT/100 neutropenic days). Vancomycin use decreased with a step change of - 13.7 DOT/100 neutropenic days (95% CI - 23.75 to - 3.0) and an overall reduction of 54.7% (14.6 DOT/100 neutropenic days). The use of all antibiotics combined decreased from 155.6 to 138 DOT/100 neutropenic days, a reduction of 11.3%. No deaths directly related to early discontinuation of EAT were identified, also no notable difference in ICU-admission (9/116 in period I, 9/152 in period II) and positive blood cultures (4/116 in period I, 2/152 in period II) was detected. Conclusion: The introduction of a protocol promoting restrictive use of EAT resulted in reduction of carbapenem and vancomycin use and appears to be safe in AML or high-risk MDS patients with febrile neutropenia during chemotherapy or SCT
The Dutch Working Party on Antibiotic Policy (SWAB) Recommendations for the Diagnosis and Management of Febrile Neutropenia in Patients with Cancer
Introduction This guideline was written by a multidisciplinary committee with mandated members of the Dutch Society for Infectious Diseases, Dutch Society for Hematology, Dutch Society for Medical Oncology, Dutch Association of Hospital Pharmacists, Dutch Society for Medical Microbiology, and Dutch Society for Pediatrics. The guideline is written for adults and pediatric patients. Method The recommendations are based on the answers to nine questions formulated by the guideline committee. To provide evidence-based recommendations we used all relevant clinical guidelines published since 2010 as a source, supplemented with systematic searches and evaluation of the recent literature (2010-2020) and, where necessary, supplemented by expert-based advice. Results For adults the guideline distinguishes between high- and standard-risk neutropenia based on expected duration of neutropenia (> 7 days versus 7 days) and in children with neutropenia, ceftazidime, cefepime, and piperacillin-tazobactam are all first-choice options for empirical antibiotic therapy in case of fever. In adults with standard-risk neutropenia (duration of neutropenia <= 7 days) the MASCC score can be used to assess the individual risk of infectious complications. For patients with a low risk of infectious complications (high MASCC score) oral antibiotic therapy in an outpatient setting is recommended. For patients with a high risk of infectious complications (low MASCC score) antibiotic therapy per protocol sepsis of unknown origin is recommended.Immunogenetics and cellular immunology of bacterial infectious disease
On different lagrangian formalisms for vector resonances within chiral perturbation theory
We study the relation of vector Proca field formalism and antisymmetric
tensor field formalism for spin-one resonances in the context of the large N_C
inspired chiral resonance Lagrangian systematically up to the order O(p6) and
give a transparent prescription for the transition from vector to antisymmetric
tensor Lagrangian and vice versa. We also discuss the possibility to describe
the spin-one resonances using an alternative "mixed" first order formalism,
which includes both types of fields simultaneously, and compare this one with
the former two. We also briefly comment on the compatibility of the above
lagrangian formalisms with the high-energy constraints for concrete VVP
correlator.Comment: 34 pages, 3 figure
Electromagnetic transitions in an effective chiral Lagrangian with the eta-prime and light vector mesons
We consider the chiral Lagrangian with a nonet of Goldstone bosons and a
nonet of light vector mesons. The mixing between the pseudoscalar mesons eta
and eta-prime is taken into account. A novel counting scheme is suggested that
is based on hadrogenesis, which conjectures a mass gap in the meson spectrum of
QCD in the limit of a large number of colors. Such a mass gap would justify to
consider the vector mesons and the eta-prime meson as light degrees of freedom.
The complete leading order Lagrangian is constructed and discussed. As a first
application it is tested against electromagnetic transitions of light vector
mesons to pseudoscalar mesons. Our parameters are determined by the
experimental data on photon decays of the omega, phi and eta-prime meson. In
terms of such parameters we predict the corresponding decays into virtual
photons with either dielectrons or dimuons in the final state.Comment: 17 pages, extended discussion on mixin
Chiral effective field theories of the strong interactions
Effective field theories of the strong interactions based on the approximate
chiral symmetry of QCD provide a model-independent approach to low-energy
hadron physics. We give a brief introduction to mesonic and baryonic chiral
perturbation theory and discuss a number of applications. We also consider the
effective field theory including vector and axial-vector mesons.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures, proceedings of "Many-Body Structure of Strongly
Interacting Systems", Mainz, Germany, Feb. 23-25 201
Definitions and treatment of oligometastatic oesophagogastric cancer according to multidisciplinary tumour boards in Europe.
Consensus about the definition and treatment of oligometastatic oesophagogastric cancer is lacking.
To assess the definition and treatment of oligometastatic oesophagogastric cancer across multidisciplinary tumour boards (MDTs) in Europe.
European expert centers (n = 49) were requested to discuss 15 real-life cases in their MDT with at least a medical, surgical, and radiation oncologist present. The cases varied in terms of location and number of metastases, histology, timing of detection (i.e. synchronous versus metachronous), primary tumour treatment status, and response to systemic therapy. The primary outcome was the agreement in the definition of oligometastatic disease at diagnosis and after systemic therapy. The secondary outcome was the agreement in treatment strategies. Treatment strategies for oligometastatic disease were categorised into upfront local treatment (i.e. metastasectomy or stereotactic radiotherapy), systemic therapy followed by restaging to consider local treatment or systemic therapy alone. The agreement across MDTs was scored to be either absent/poor (<50%), fair (50%-75%), or consensus (≥75%).
A total of 47 MDTs across 16 countries fully discussed the cases (96%). Oligometastatic disease was considered in patients with 1-2 metastases in either the liver, lung, retroperitoneal lymph nodes, adrenal gland, soft tissue or bone (consensus). At follow-up, oligometastatic disease was considered after a median of 18 weeks of systemic therapy when no progression or progression in size only of the oligometastatic lesion(s) was seen (consensus). If at restaging after a median of 18 weeks of systemic therapy the number of lesions progressed, this was not considered as oligometastatic disease (fair agreement). There was no consensus on treatment strategies for oligometastatic disease.
A broad consensus on definitions of oligometastatic oesophagogastric cancer was found among MDTs of oesophagogastric cancer expert centres in Europe. However, high practice variability in treatment strategies exists