The Synapse Critical Care & Emergency Medicine Podcast
The Synapse is a Critical Care and Emergency Medicine podcast breaking down topics and case studies into simple easy-to-digest segments to help build paramedic, nurse, and other pre-hospital and hospital clinicians into more robust providers. This podcast is open to any and all Emergency Medicine and Critical Care healthcare providers both in and out-of-hospital. Every effort is made to put out as many various topics to cater to everyone's interests and levels. Leave your technician hat outside, put on your clinician hat, and join us!
**Disclosures:
1) This is a non-monetary podcast, created and edited for free for your enjoyment and learning purposes.
2) The opinions and information presented in these podcast episodes is based off of up-to-date research, the latest evidence-based-guidelines, and/or anecdotal experience/opinions of the author.
3) Under no circumstances does this podcast or the information presented within each episode serve as authorization to work outside your guidelines, protocols, or workplace rules otherwise. When in doubt, contact Medical Control for guidance.
The Synapse Critical Care & Emergency Medicine Podcast
The Synapse Season 3 Episode 97 - Antibiotic Infusions...Not All Are Rapid in 30 Minutes!
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
There are certain aspects of Pharmacology and Pharmacokinetics that are non-negotiable. One of those is the aspect of time in relation to antibiotic effectiveness. How much time is the antibiotic in the system for, vs how long does it take to reach peak effect or be cleared before hand. Certain antibiotics must be ordered and administered over a much longer time than we are used to doing, especially in the ED where we often see antibiotics gravity-infused rapidly over 10-15 minutes "because it is what we do." Often these patients are not exposed to the antibiotic long enough before it is processed out, meaning it never reaches peak effect.
The primary concept in pharmacology that refers to the time the body is exposed to antibiotics versus effectiveness is Time-Dependent Killing, often expressed as the percentage of time the free drug concentration remains above the Minimum Inhibitory Concentration.
This parameter describes how long the antibiotic concentration stays higher than the minimum needed to inhibit bacteria, rather than how high the concentration peaks. This is different from Concentration-Dependent Killing, but both will be discussed here.
