7-days Versus 14 Days of Antibiotics Therapy for Ventilator Associated Pneumonia

There is evidence that using shorter antibiotic regimens may help in decreasing antimicrobial resistance and reducing drug-related adverse events.6 Moreover, short-course treatments were found to be as effective as longer-course antibiotic treatment.7,8 In a pooled analysis of four randomized trials in VAP comparing shorter versus long duration of antibiotics in the management of VAP, no difference in the mortality was found. We hypothesize that the use of short course of antibiotics in the treatment of VAP due to drug resistant Acinetobacter baumanii (sensitive to carbapenems and/or colistin only) may result in a higher antibiotic-free days and drug related adverse events, in comparison to a longer duration of antibiotics. In this study, we propose to study a 7-day versus 14-day course of antibiotics in patients with drug-resistant Acinetobacter baumanii.