Brief therapy for community-acquired pneumonia is superior to traditional therapy: findings from SCOUT-CAP RCT
This US multicenter study of good methodological quality, with an innovative method of enrollment of 380 uncomplicated cases of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) on the third day of antibiotic therapy, is the first one to demonstrate the superiority a short antibiotic therapy (5 days) in children aged 6-71 months compared to the traditional one. The RADAR score used by the authors to assess superiority considers not only the clinical response to therapy and resolution of symptoms but also the presence and severity of adverse effects of antibiotic therapy (box.1). Slightly less than 10% of children in each strategy have an inadequate clinical response. Short therapy has a 69% probability (95% CI, 63-75) of presenting a more desirable RADAR score than standard therapy. In addition, the authors performed antibiotic resistance (resistoma) gene analysis for a group of 171 children. The average number of antibiotic resistance genes per prokaryotic cell (RGPC) was significantly lower with short therapy and thus helpful in counteracting the problematic phenomenon of antibiotic resistance.
