bactitech
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Topics: 25
Posts: 494
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Best thing to do is learn which drugs treat gram positive infections, which treat gram negative infections, and which are broad spectrum for both. I'm not a med student and have no access to Kaplan. When we set up sentivities we use a gram negative panel for gnr's and a gram positive panel for gpc's.
That being said, it's a lot more complicated than that, as some organisms have no methodologies for performing susceptibilities (Neisseria meningitidis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Eikenella corrodens, and many other of the more fastidious organisms).
There are classes of drugs (penicillins, quinolones, aminoglycosides, etc.). Best to know which drugs fall in which classes, I would think.
Ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, and many other floxacins are quinolones, for example. However, levo is used for some types of infections over Cipro (respiratory I believe). There are some new quinolones on the market that are somewhat controversial (Gatifloxacin, I believe).
The aminoglycosides are gentamicin, tobramycin, and amikacin. They usually don't go to the latter unless gent/tobra don't work. There are severe side effects from this class of drugs (deafness being one) so blood levels are usually done to monitor them. Historically they were used for Pseudomonas infections, I believe, but I'm not sure if they're being used as much now that there are other drugs available (Imipenem? - not sure of this).
Can you obtain any type of list of drug classes somewhere? I'm not a doc, and only know about what I report out on what organism. I am not involved in the prescribing - we just report out what is approved at our hospital for certain organisms. Formularies will vary from hospital to hospital, so what we report isn't necessarily what the hospital across town reports.
Kaplan vs. Easy? Haven't a clue. If anyone else can help, by all means chime in. I'm just going by my MT experience here.
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Clinical Microbiology since 1974
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