What is an empirical therapy?

Empirical therapy is the provision of treatment in the absence of diagnosis. This can be recommended when it is important to quickly get the patient into treatment to prevent complications or when the time and costs associated with treatment are impractical. In a classic example, if a patient reports a doctor with symptoms of urinary tract infection, such as frequent, painful urination, the doctor often prescribes antibiotics immediately. Treatment is administered even if the patient's infection has not been definitively diagnosed. For many reasons, antibiotics are common for empirical therapy. One of the concerns in patients who are seriously ill is that they could deteriorate rapidly if doctors were waiting for treatment until testing confirmed the diagnosis and determines which antibiotic is appropriate. Someone with a serious risk of complications may immediately need antibiotics without waiting. The physician may apply for testing to check and adjust treatment, if necessary, depending on the test results.

Another problem is that a detailed diagnosis can be expensive and not always necessary. For example, the patient's urinary tract infections can respond very well to a wide range of antibiotics designed to target a number of organisms. The patient would not need expensive urine collection and culture to confirm the presence of infection and determine which drug to use. If the patient does not respond to empirical therapy, the physician may move to diagnostic testing because the failure of the response is a clear indicator that something else is happening or that the patient is infected with a resistant organism.

doctors determine whether the patient could benefit from empirical therapy based on reported symptoms and experience. In addition to the treatment of patients preliminarily for common conditions that may not require testing, doctors may also consider the indiviidal history of patients. Someone with a recurring history of urinary tract infections may not need detailed testing every time, as this is a well -known problem. This patient could even receive a permanentAntibiotics regulation to start taking the first symptom symptom.

Medical protocols to determine whether empirical therapy is introduced in some facilities. One of the concerns is that patients can receive unnecessary medicines that could contribute to problems such as the development of antibiotics resistance. The hasty assumption of the problem is the result of a common problem that does not require diagnostic testing, it may also mean that the diagnosis is omitted. For example, frequent painful urination could be a sexually transmitted infection or a sign of urine cancer.