Antibiothérapie aux urgences

Antibiotherapy used in the emergency department are mainly empirical. It can lead to two consequences. First, emergence of resistant strain of bacteria due to inappropriate initial antimicrobial therapy. Second, increase of mortality and morbidity due to inadequat therapy. To avoid these risks, emergency physician should consider the site of infections and host factors for making etiological hypothesis. Making clinical diagnosis is essential and must if necessary confirmed by more relevant radiological or laboratory tests. Microbiological tests, time of therapy, choice and route of antibiotics are linked to clinical presentation of the patient. To improve quality of antibiotherapy in the emergency departement, guidelines for choosing antibiotics for the most important infections encoutered in the emergency department have been made by many infectious diseases society. These guidelines should be widely used by emergency physicians.