Successful Tigecycline Use in Combined Therapy of Ventilator-Associated Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia: a Clinical Case

In patients under artificial lung ventilation (ALV) there is often observed development of severe ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) due to polyresistant hospital pathogens. It should be noted that in the patient described here with the initial diagnosis of community-acquired pneumonia rapidly subjected to prolonged ALV the previous antibacterial therapy by broad spectrum drugs significantly increased the risk of contamination just by multiresistant nosocomial strains, which hampered the starting therapy of nosocomial pneumonia either when there were not available or sometimes there were available microbial cultures. When the treatment of severe pneumonias caused by multiresistant hospital flora resistant to carbapenems is actual, in the alternative therapy it could be used tigecycline, a tetracycline from the group of glycylcyclines. A case of successful treatment of nosocomial VAP by tigecycline based on the results of the bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) culture is described. The case is of interest because tigecycline was used as off label.