Intensive care patients should be given prophylactic antibiotics

Hospital deaths among patients in intensive care units could be cut by a quarter if patients were given a cocktail of prophylactic antibiotics, a large randomised controlled study in the Netherlands has said (Lancet 2003;362: 1011–6).

Advocating the use of prophylactic antibiotics in intensive care has been described as like “swearing in church”

Credit: HORACIO SORMANI/SPL

Amsterdam's Academic Medical Centre, which carried out the study, believes it has put the treatment back on the agenda by showing an “impressive reduction” in mortality in longer stay intensive care patients. It also shows that …