Kinetics of antibiotics in relation to effective and convenient outpatient parenteral therapy.
An important goal of outpatient parenteral antibiotic therapy (OPAT) is to provide a drug and dosing regimen that allows for convenient administration of the antibiotic in the outpatient setting. While once-daily administration or handling of the drug would be ideal, dosing frequencies up to three times a day for intravenous administration and twice daily for intramuscular injection can be tolerated by most patients. The frequency and method of antimicrobial administration is dependent not only on the kinetics of drug concentrations in serum and tissues (i.e pharmacokinetics), but also on the kinetics or time course of the drug's antimicrobial activity (i.e. pharmacodynamics). This short review will focus on the interaction between pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics for the major classes of antibacterial agents used for outpatient parenteral therapy.
Craig
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Departments of Medicine, William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital and University of Wisconsin, 2500 Overlook Terrace, Madison, WI 53705, USA.