A systematic review of antibiotic dosing regimens for septic patients receiving continuous renal replacement therapy: do current studies supply sufficient data?

BACKGROUND: Drug dosing for septic patients with acute renal failure receiving continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) is complicated, and failure to correctly dose may result in either drug toxicity or treatment failure and development of antibiotic resistance. The aim of this study was to establish an ideal dataset that needs to be reported when presenting pharmacokinetic data for these patients and review current literature for completeness of this dataset. METHODS: An ideal dataset was established of the parameters that should be reported when calculating a drug dosing regimen from first principles. A Medline search was performed of relevant literature producing 64 citations from which completeness of the specified criteria was examined. RESULTS: None of the studies analysed presented the full dataset that we established as necessary. Of concern, basic pharmacokinetic parameters such as volume of distribution (V(d)) and clearance (CL) were specified in only 79% and 81% of studies, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: A large proportion of current studies do not report key information necessary to devise a rational dosing regimen for patients with acute renal failure receiving CRRT, and we hope this dataset will be a useful guide when reporting future pharmacokinetic data.