Guidelines for Monitoring Vancomycin against Staphylococus aureus Infection

Medscape.com: "The Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, and the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists have issued therapeutic guidelines for monitoring of vancomycin treatment for Staphylococcus aureus infection. The summary of consensus recommendations is published in the August 1 issue of Clinical Infectious Disease."

Some of the clinical recommendations include:

• Dosing based on actual body weight, even for obese patients.
• Measuring trough levels drawn just prior to the fourth dose.
• Keeping trough concentrations greater than 10 mg/L and even higher, 15-20 mg/L, for complicated infections.
• Consider alternate therapy for patients with CLcr 70-100 mL/minute and a targeted AUC/MIC > 400.

Additional clinical recommendations can be found in the guidelines, which are available for free in PDF format here.