Challenging questions in treating bronchitis.
Whatever facts we gather and no matter how many we have, you and I must eventually put the journal down and pick up our stethoscope, pen, and prescription pad and go to work. Hopefully we can do better than, "Therapy is not uniform and specific antibiotic regimens are usually selected based on local tribal custom." We can discard an old paradigm, "The absence of data bears no relation to the strength of opinion." Personally, I have used these new scientific data before I reached my conclusion. I have developed 10 points to structure my new approach. I invite you to compare my conclusions to yours. 1. In acute bronchitis, in otherwise healthy adults, my preference is to not prescribe an antibiotic. If I do, it is not over the phone. You should want to see and examine the patient. If there are no helpful hints to etiology, I choose a newer macrolide for those under age 50 and use a short course, five-seven days. For patients over age 50, especially if they are "healthy smokers," consider a short course of cefuroxime. (You can see, even in these acute bronchitis patients, you want an antibiotic effective against today's pathogens.) 2. In all chronic bronchitis patients, prevention of further damage to the airways should be attempted by instituting a program of smoking cessation and appropriate immunizations against influenza and pneumococcus. 3. Treatment outcomes will also improve if we recognize that in some patients the progressing SOB, cough, and increasing sputum production are due to congestive heart failure and not due to infection. I try to think about congestive heart failure in all of my patients, but especially in those with known heart disease and cardiomegaly on their chest x-ray. 4. Routine pulmonary function testing is important in smoking patients. Physicians underestimate the degree of obstruction present when they rely on physical exam alone. Hopefully long before the patient's acute illness you have established whether or not obstruction is present. This information helps identify the high risk patient for not only recurrent bouts of infection but also those at increased risk for lung cancer. 5. We will have more success in treating AECB when we elect to use an antibiotic only for patients with at least two of the following three cardinal symptoms: increased dyspnea, increased sputum production, and increased purulent sputum. COPD patients have many days when they feel more SOB. To use this or any one sign as the sole indication for starting an antibiotic has been proven not to make a statistically significant difference in outcome in most patients. Also, the value of prophylactic antibiotic therapy has not been established. 6. When airflow obstruction is moderately severe or more pronounced, AECB should usually be treated with oral steroids. Other measures such as chronic bronchodilator therapy, supplemental and home oxygen use, and pulmonary rehabilitation have been extensively reviewed elsewhere.