The challenge of prescribing treatment for respiratory tract infections.

In the treatment of respiratory infections, good clinical and economic outcomes depend on the patient, the pathogen, and the therapeutic protocol. Of these, treatment is the only area in which a clinician can exert control, but selecting the optimal therapy can be very challenging. When choosing a therapy, clinicians should consider the pharmacodynamics of each antibiotic. This may be helpful as calculations of optimal drug exposure based on ratio of pharmacodynamic variables appear to correlate with clinical outcome. Although many current therapies are effective in the treatment of respiratory infections, several factors, such as the development of more severe illnesses, increasing antimicrobial resistance, and a growing awareness of the role of atypical pathogens, are leading many clinicians to prescribe new, more potent antibiotic therapy.