Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Steroids for community acquired pneumonia?

Over the last couple of years there's been some noise about this. However a recently published RCT has found:

Prednisolone (at 40 mg) once daily for a week does not improve outcome in hospitalized patients with CAP. A benefit in more severely ill patients cannot be excluded.. Because of its association with increased late failure and lack of efficacy prednisolone should not be recommended as routine adjunctive treatment in CAP.


Related Medscape CME activity (where some important limitations of the study, such as how COPD patients fit into the mix, are discussed) here.

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