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Ana Carolina Brusius; Alexandre P. Zavascki, MD; Sandra Costa, MD, PhD

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

The antibiotic prescription for acute respiratory tract infection is still used with caution because there is no effective way to distinguish between viral and bacterial infection. Briel et al¹ evaluated whether antibiotic therapy guided by procalcitonin reduces the use of antibiotics without increasing the restriction of activities experienced by patients compared with a standard therapy based on current guidelines. However, this primary end point—the restriction of activities as experienced by patients—is patient dependent and hard to replicate from one setting to another. It is not possible to capture its content and construct. Does it means work absence, no leisure time activity, lying in bed?

The restriction of activities based on the condition of being sick is likely to be biased toward the education level of the patients. Even so, the unbalanced distribution of less-educated patients in the control group . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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Procalcitonin-Guided Antibiotic Use vs a Standard Approach for Acute Respiratory Tract Infections in Primary Care
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