Ann & Robert H. Lurie Kids’s Hospital of Chicago introduced final week that it has been awarded $12 million to check a brand new technique for prescribing antibiotics in younger kids with gentle pneumonia.
In partnership with College of Utah Well being, clinicians and researchers at Lurie Kids’s will examine whether or not an strategy often known as safety-net antibiotic prescription (SNAP) leads to lowered antibiotic use and comparable scientific enchancment in contrast with speedy antibiotic use, which is the present customary of take care of younger kids with gentle pneumonia. With the SNAP strategy, suppliers do not give the kid an antibiotic until the kid’s signs worsen or don’t enhance inside 3 days.
The research can be carried out at Lurie Kids’s and three different pediatric emergency departments throughout the nation, in addition to 12 pediatric major care places of work and three pressing care facilities which can be a part of the Pediatric Analysis Consortium at Kids’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The funding comes from the Affected person-Centered Outcomes Analysis Institute.
Avoiding pointless antibiotics
Co-principal research investigator Todd Florin, MD, of Lurie Kids’s and Northwestern College Feinberg College of Drugs, mentioned the SNAP technique is at the moment beneficial for kids’s ear infections however has not been evaluated in pneumonia.
“Most pneumonias in younger kids are attributable to a virus, which the physique fights off with out antibiotics,” Florin mentioned in a hospital press launch. “Regardless of this, most kids with pneumonia are at the moment handled with antibiotics. You will need to keep away from exposing kids to pointless antibiotics for a lot of causes, together with their uncomfortable side effects, equivalent to rashes that may mimic allergy symptoms or an upset abdomen.”
Julia Szymczak, PhD, of College of Utah Well being, mentioned the research might generate proof that can assist mother and father and pediatricians navigate what generally is a troublesome choice.
“No one needs to present pointless drugs, however it’s scary to care for a kid with pneumonia and it’s typically unclear whether or not an antibiotic will assist,” she mentioned. “SNAP empowers mother and father to present their little one an opportunity to combat off the an infection on their very own whereas additionally having quick entry to antibiotics if it turns into clear they’re wanted.” Â
