Comparing current US and European guidelines for nosocomial pneumonia

In the last 2 years, two major guidelines for the management of nosocomial pneumonia have been published: The International European Respiratory Society/European Society of Intensive Care Medicine/European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases/Asociación Latinoamericana de Toráx guidelines for the management of hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) and ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) and the American guidelines for management of adults with HAP and VAP; both the guidelines made important clinical recommendations for the management of patients.

With the increasing emergence of multidrug resistant (MDR) organisms, paired with a relative reduction in new antibiotic development, nosocomial infections have become one of the most significant issues affecting global healthcare today. Despite several stark differences between the European and American guidelines, they are in agreement about many aspects of nosocomial pneumonia management.

American and European guidelines promote prompt and appropriate empiric treatment which is immediately guided by local microbiological data, followed by an adequate de-escalation protocol based on culture results with a 1-week course of treatment. Both also questioned the use of biomarkers in HAP/VAP, whether as part of the diagnosis or daily assessment of patients. On the contrary, they have conflicting views in regards to the optimum method of diagnosis, the risk factors used to stratify patients, the use of clinical scoring systems and the various antibiotic classes used. All were presented with varying levels of evidence to support these differences in opinion, indicating that further research into these areas is required before a consensus can be agreed upon.