The Susceptibility of MDR-K. Pneumoniae to Polymyxin B Plus its Nebulised Form Versus Polymyxin B Alone in Critically Ill South Asian Patients

Abstract

Critically ill patients in intensive care units are at high risk of dying not only from the severity of their illness but also from secondary causes such as hospital-acquired infections. USA national medical record-data show that approximately 10% of patients on mechanical ventilation in an intensive care unit developed ventilator-associated pneumonia. Polymyxin B has been used intravenously in the treatment of multi-drug resistant gram-negative infections, either as a monotherapy or with other potentially effective antibiotics, and the recent international guidelines have emphasised the use of nebulised polymyxin B together with intravenous polymyxin B to gain the optimum clinical outcome in ventilator-associated pneumonia cases caused by multi-drug resistant gram-negative infections.

Keywords

• ventilator-associated pneumonia (vap)
• multi-drug resistant k. pneumoniae (mdr-kp)
• polymyxin b