Bacterial Load Guided Therapy for Severe Bronchiectasis Exacerbations
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2020-02-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
From the British Thoracic Guidelines1 and a PUBMED search there are no randomised controlled
trials exploring optimum antibiotic duration for chest infections. The standard course of
intravenous antibiotics for exacerbations of bronchiectasis is 14 days. This is a preliminary
open labelled study to assess whether it is feasible to stop treatment earlier (day 8 or day
11) if the bacterial load is low or absent at days 7 or day 10 (it takes 24 hours for the
results to be processed). All patients will therefore have a minimum of 7 days intravenous
antibiotics. The intravenous antibiotic chosen is routinely used for exacerbations in
bronchiectasis.
Our hypothesis is that patients could have personalised treatment and be able to stop
antibiotics when the sputum bacterial load is low (<10^6 colony forming units/ml (cfu/ml)).