Survey on once-daily therapy with ceftriaxone for pediatric bacterial infections

The use of antibacterial agents must have had a broad antibacterial spectrum and a strong antibacterial effect, and the medication plan of an antibacterial agent also considers pharmacokinetics in the treatment of bacterial infection. It is important to determine a medication interval based on "time above MIC" from a PK/PD in β-lactam antibacterial agents. Ceftriaxone(CTRX), an injectable cephem antibacterial agent, has a broad antibacterial spectrum and strong antibacterial effect, and showed sufficient antibacterial effect in once-daily treatment and that the half-life in blood is very long. The Japanese Society of Chemotherapy strongly desires the approval for a once-daily dosing regimen of CTRX. A survey on once-daily treatment with CTRX in pediatric bacterial infections yielded the following results. Some 51% of respondents (28/55 doctors) had used CTRX in once-daily treatment. The distribution of dosage and term were 50-59 mg/kg for 5 days in inpatients and 20-59 mg/kg for 3 days in outpatients. Advantages included outpatient use, administration without hospitalization equipment, maintenance of patient and family QOL and cutting of medical expenses after approval of once-daily CTRX treatment Dis- advantages included difficulty of the correspondence to the patients' emergency and the correspondence to adverse reactions of CTRX such as a drug allergy. The intentions to suppose that respondents want to use once-daily CTRX treatment were 80% for outpatients and 51% for inpatients respectively. We consider that sufficient information about advantages and disadvantages of once-daily CTRX treatment should be offered to physicians for an appropriate use of this regimen.