Do Anaerobes Really Cause Pneumonia? 　　Dr. Marik[6] then took the podium to challenge the commonly held belief that anaerobes really cause pneumonia. He proposed that anaerobes may cause pneumonia in a few special patients, but they are not nearly as common a cause of lower tract disease as our antibiotic prescribing practices would suggest. 　　Anaerobes clearly cause lung abscesses and can have a role in empyemas. We often use drugs with anaerobic spectra in our antimicrobial approach to pneumonia. However, if one looks for primary data, there are only 9 studies with primary data, including 4 important articles by John Bartlett.[7,8] While Bartlett's works are credible studies, they focus on patients who were alcoholics with poor oral hygiene and gingivitis and who had been symptomatic for many weeks. Most had purulent cough and reported aspiration. Thus, the populations that Barlett studied appear to be an unusual subpopulation that is not representative of what we usually see in terms of community-acquired or hospital-acquired pneumonia. Dr. Marik noted that clindamycin and metronidazole are risk factors for developing vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE), and that we could reduce the frequency of VRE by reducing the use of unnecessary antianaerobic drugs.[9] 版权所有：好医生网站