Clinical Research Studies

Bloodstream infection (Bacteremia) means presence of bacteria in the blood which causes illness and is common in patients during hospital stay. In some people, it is the cause of hospital stay, and in other people, it develops during hospital stay. Such infections require urgent treatment with antibiotics. Limited literature is available to guide physicians about how long to treat these patients. Long durations of treatment (14 days) may result in unnecessary side effects and antibiotic resistance. Recent data from some research studies has suggested that shorter duration of antibiotic treatment (less than 7 days) is as effective as longer duration of treatment for a lot of infections due to bacteria but this has not been confirmed/tested in patients with bloodstream infections. The purpose of this study is to determine whether in patients with bloodstream infection, shorter duration antibiotic treatment (7 days) is associated with the same survival rates at 90 days to those achieved with longer duration antibiotic treatment (14 days). The current study is designed to find the best possible duration of antibiotic treatment in patients with bloodstream infections and will answer the question of whether patients with bloodstream infection can be treated with a substantially shorter duration of antibiotic therapy Establishing the optimal treatment duration for this population will represent a major advance in health-related knowledge. If shorter duration treatment is as good as longer duration treatment, findings may also be generalizable to non-bacteremic populations and hence could generate larger health-system wide reductions in unnecessary antimicrobial use, costs, and resistance.