[Therapeutic monitoring of antibiotics: New methodologies: biosensors].

The pharmacokinetics of antibiotics, especially in severely ill patients, may be profoundly altered due to multiple pathophysiological changes. Recent studies have shown that empiric dosing recommendations for ICU patients are inadequate to effectively treat a broad range of susceptible organisms and need to be reconsidered. Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) is an important mean for optimizing drug utilization and doses for the purpose of improving the clinical effectiveness. However, it is very challenging to quantify plasma antibiotic concentrations in clinical situations as a routine practice, because of the high costs and complexities associated with advanced instrumental techniques. Currently there are not routine and low cost methods to determine the presence and concentration of β-lactam antibiotics in plasma patients in a clinical setup. Indeed, such analytical methods are based on chromatographic techniques mainly used in research. Here we describe and comment different techniques, focusing on our preliminary experience using biosensors.