The 104 Day Report: A Successful Intervention of Improving Patient Retention

Integrated results of 2 phase 3 studies comparing tigecy-cline and levofloxacin in community-acquired pneumonia. and safety of tigecycline compared with van-comycin or linezolid for treatment of serious infections with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or vancomycin-resistant en-terococci: a phase 3, multicentre, double-blind, randomized study. A phase 3, open-label, noncomparative study of tigecycline in the treatment of patients with selected serious infections due to resistant gram-negative organisms including Entero-bacter species, Acinetobacter baumannii and Klebsiella pneumoniae. and body fluid concentrations of tigecycline after a single 100-mg dose. Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia: recurrence and the impact of antibiotic treatment in a prospective multicenter study. A, et al. Infectious Diseases Society of America/ American Thoracic Society consensus guidelines on the management of community-acquired pneumonia in adults. To the Editor—We appreciate the interest in the article and the comments. As was mentioned in the letter by Dr Tarchini [1], our article [2] specified very clearly the limitations to the analysis, and we agree that these limitations should be applied to all post hoc analyses. Several additional points require clarification. First, the analysis was not a meta-analysis; it was a pooled analysis of secondary bacteremia in tigecycline's approved indications. Second , we believe that the comments by Dr Tarchini [1] on the quality of the data and the interpretation of the data are not accurate. The purpose of the randomized, double-blind clinical trials was to determine the safety and efficacy of tigecycline empirical therapy with appropriate and approved comparators for each given indication. Given the serum pharmacoki-netic data of tigecycline, the purpose of the pooled analysis was to determine the safety and efficacy of tigecycline empirical therapy in the subset of subjects with secondary bacteremia within the approved indications. The advantages and disadvantages of individual antibiotic choices for definitive therapy were not the primary aim of the clinical trials or the pooled analysis. In addition, the comment by Dr Tar-chini [1] regarding empirical levofloxacin therapy for the treatment of community-acquired pneumonia is not accurate. Lev-ofloxacin is approved for 7–14 days therapy at the 500-mg dose, and this was the recommended dose at the time the trials [3, 4] were designed and initiated. We believe that our statement regarding the similarity in cure rates between empirical ti-gecycline therapy and appropriate and approved empirical comparative therapy in subjects with secondary bacteremia is accurate [2]. Acknowledgments Potential conflicts of interest. All authors are or were employed by the manufacturer of tige-cycline (Wyeth/Pfizer). …