Allergies, Author Interviews / 15.03.2013
Treatment of Patients with a History of Penicillin Allergy in a Large Tertiary-Care Academic Hospital
MedicalResearch.com Matthieu Picard, MD, FRCPC
Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont
Université de Montréal Montréal, Qc, Canada
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Picard: We found that patients reporting a history of penicillin allergy were often treated with penicillins despite their history of allergic reaction to that drug.
In this study, which took place in a large tertiary-care academic hospital without allergists on staff, more than half of patients with a presumed penicillin allergy and a need for antibiotics were treated with beta-lactams, a class of antibiotics that includes penicillins and drugs that can cause allergic reactions in penicillin allergic individuals because of cross-reactivity.
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