Objective To explore whether hospitalized elderly patients with severe communityacquired pneumonia ( SCAP) have better outcomes if they are treated with dual-therapy consisting of a β-lactam/macrolide or fluoroquinolone.Methods A prospective study was conducted in patients with SCAP aged 65 years or older between January 2007 and January 2012. These patients were assigned to a combination therapy group or a β-lactam monotherapy group by the attending physicians. Time to clinical stability( TCS) and total mortality were calculated. Prognostic factors for death were analyzed. Results Among the 232 patients, 153 patients were given β-lactam/macrolide or β-lactam/ fluoroquinolone ( macrolide in 67 patients and fluoroquinolone in 86) , while 79 were treated with β-lactam monotherapy. Compared with the monotherapy group, the combination therapy group was associated with significant decreased TCS ( median TCS, 10 days vs. 13 days) , and lower overall in-hospital mortality( 24.2% vs. 43.0%, P lt;0. 01) . Compared with fluoroquinolone, macrolide use was associated with lower ICU mortality ( 14.9% vs. 31.4% , P lt;0. 01) . Simplified acute physiology score Ⅱ, pneumonia severity index, mutilobar infiltration, and β-lactam monotherapy were confirmed as independent predictors of death. Conclusion β-lactam/macrolide or β-lactam/ fluoroquinolone combination therapy, especially with macrolide, has superiority over β-lactam monotherapy in elderly patients with SCAP, and should be recommended.
ObjectiveTo systematically review the efficacy and safety of respiratory fluoroquinolones monotherapy versus β-lactams plus macrolides combination therapy for non-ICU hospitalized community acquired pneumonia (CAP) patients. MethodsWe searched databases including PubMed, the Cochrane Library (Issue 3, 2015), EMbase, CNKI, WanFang Data, VIP and CBM to identify randomized controlled trials (RCTs) involving the comparison of fluoroquinolones monotherapy with β-lactams plus macrolides combination treatment for the non-ICU hospitalized patients with CAP up to April 2015. Two reviewers independently screened literature according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, extracted data, assessed the risk bias of included studies, and then meta-analysis was performed using the RevMan 5.0 software. ResultsA total of 17 RCTs involving 5 423 patients were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that there was no significant difference between the two therapy groups on the mortality. For the clinical treatment success rates, no significant differences between the two groups were found based on the data of intention-to-treat (ITT) and per-protocol (PP) analyses. However, respiratory fluoroquinolones monotherapy was associated with higher clinical treatment success rates based on the data that it was unclear whether ITT or PP analysis was used (RR=1.08, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.18, P=0.02), especially in Asians (RR=1.10, 95%CI 1.02 to 1.18, P=0.01). Additionally, respiratory fluoroquinolones monotherapy was associated with less adverse events (RR=0.81, 95%CI 0.73 to 0.90, P<0.000 1), especially in Caucasians (RR=0.64, 95%CI 0.36 to 1.14, P=0.13). ConclusionCurrent evidence shows that the efficacy of respiratory fluoroquinolones monotherapy may be similar to β-lactams plus macrolides combination treatment for non-ICU hospitalized CAP patients. Since the limitation of quantity and quality of included studies, large-scale high-quality RCTs are needed to verify the above conclusion.