Table 1 GRADE (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluations) assessment. Question: "Should C-reactive protein (CRP) be used to guide the duration of antimicrobial treatment compared to antimicrobial treatment according to best practices in antibacterial use?"
Certainty assessment | Number of patients | Effects | Certainty | Relevance | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Number of studies | Study design | Risk of bias | Inconsistencies | Indirect evidence | Imprecision | Other considerations | Use of CRP to guide antimicrobial treatment duration | Antimicrobial treatment according to best practices in antibacterial use | Relative (95% CI) | Absolute (95% CI) | ||
Recurrence of infection | ||||||||||||
3 | Randomized controlled trials | Not severe | Not severe | Not severe | Not severe | All potential confounding factors reduced the demonstrated effect | 9/278 (3.2%) | 3/284 (1.1%) | OR 3.21 (0.86 to 12.05) | 23 more per 1.000 (from 1 minus to 103 plus) | ⨁⨁⨁⨁ High | IMPORTANT |
Mortality | ||||||||||||
3 | Randomized controlled trials | Not severe | Not severe | Not severe | Not severe | All potential confounding factors reduced the demonstrated effect | 33/278 (11.9%) | 30/284 (10.6%) | OR 1.19 (0.67 to 2.12) | 18 more per 1.000 (from 32 minus to 95 plus) | ||
Duration of antibiotic therapy | ||||||||||||
3 | Randomized controlled trials | Not severe | Not severe | Not severe | Not severe | All potential confounding factors reduced the demonstrated effect | 273 | 444 | - | Mean difference 1.82 days minus (3.23 minus to 0.4 minus) | ||