Looking for a Good, Brief Book about How to Choose and Use Antibiotics

[CCLCMer]

I'm getting ready to start my medical micro elective in a couple of weeks, and my goal for this rotation is to learn more about antibiotics, their coverage, when and how to choose them, etc. I was wondering if anyone could suggest a good book on this topic in the 200-300 page range that would be at an appropriate level for a third year medical student. I saw a few on Amazon that looked decent, but I was hoping to find people on SDN who had read them and could give me advice on which one to choose. The books I was looking at are Antibiotics Simplified by Jason Gallagher (brand new, no reviews yet but looks like it would be what I want and it's newer) versus Antibiotic Basics for Clinicians: Choosing the Right Antibacterial Agent by Alan Hauser (seems to be geared toward med students but a year older and twice as expensive-wondering if it's worth it). I also looked at the Sanford Guide to Antimicrobial Therapy but that seems to be more of a pocket book on dosing (plus all the reviews complained about how small the print was). What I really want is a book that I can realistically read cover to cover in two weeks, and that provides general principles for how to choose antibiotics in different situations, not just a mass listing of each bacterial species and what covers it without any context. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me pick.

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[augmel]

Unfortunately, antibiotic choice is a somewhat random topic that is not easily covered in a text format. It is also taught very poorly in med school. I think the best approach is to memorize a simplified version of a table such as on pages 65-70 of the current Sanford guide. Once you have these big sort of trends in your memory (clinda covers GPC and anaerobes but not GNR, aminoglycosides cover GNR but not GPC/anaerobes) you have a place to start. Then it is just remembering idiosyncratic things such as 2nd generation cephalosporins covering anaerobes bettern then 1st or 3rd and using aminoglycosides for augmenting staph killing even though they don't work against GPCs. If you memorize a simplified table, you will be ahead of the vast majority of interns who just remember "we use cipro for UTIs, right?" If you must buy a book, get the cheap one cause I don't think you'll use it much.

 

[JayneCobb]

I'm getting ready to start my medical micro elective in a couple of weeks, and my goal for this rotation is to learn more about antibiotics, their coverage, when and how to choose them, etc. I was wondering if anyone could suggest a good book on this topic in the 200-300 page range that would be at an appropriate level for a third year medical student. I saw a few on Amazon that looked decent, but I was hoping to find people on SDN who had read them and could give me advice on which one to choose. The books I was looking at are Antibiotics Simplified by Jason Gallagher (brand new, no reviews yet but looks like it would be what I want and it's newer) versus Antibiotic Basics for Clinicians: Choosing the Right Antibacterial Agent by Alan Hauser (seems to be geared toward med students but a year older and twice as expensive-wondering if it's worth it). I also looked at the Sanford Guide to Antimicrobial Therapy but that seems to be more of a pocket book on dosing (plus all the reviews complained about how small the print was). What I really want is a book that I can realistically read cover to cover in two weeks, and that provides general principles for how to choose antibiotics in different situations, not just a mass listing of each bacterial species and what covers it without any context. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me pick.

There is no end all book for antibiotic selection out there. What I've found best for me is as suggested above, learn the spectrum of each antibiotic and then learn the bacteria which cause what disease and soon you can crossreference in your head which antibiotics will work. The sanford guide is a stellar reference and it also comes in a much larger size than the normal pocket book, which you can see here.

Learn the tables the augmel suggests and then start with your most common drugs and learn the little things like mode of excretion, side effects, allergy interaction, tissue penetration, etc. Unfortunatly I nkow of no 1 book which ties all this together

 

[CCLCMer]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm going to do both (memorize Abx tables and read one of the books). They have the second book in our library so I checked it out, and it has some tables and gives advice about what kind of info a med student should memorize and know. It seems like a decent book actually and written at a level that won't be totally over my poor MS3 head.

 

[WorkaholicsAnon]

"clinical microbiology made ridiculously simple" is an excellent book that every med student should read at least once. That will help a lot.