Antimicrobial therapy in infants and children. Part I. Review of antimicrobial agents

The intelligent use of antimicrobial agents depends on knowledge of the activity of various chemotherapeutic drugs, their relative effectiveness and toxicity in a variety of infectious conditions in patients of various ages, as well as knowledge of the proper utilization and interpretation of laboratory data. The widespread use of antibiotics is too often interpreted as an indication of their benign nature. There are no harmless antimicrobial agents. Although several new antibiotics are introduced each year, their novelty and newness rarely imply superiority. Too often physicians forget that the agents which have been available and used for years will remain the drugs of choice for most infectious conditions. Thorough familiarity with a few selected antibiotics is preferable to superficial knowledge of many. Finally, physicians must clearly differentiate in their own minds between the desire to do something truly useful for their patients and the magic of administering a drug.