Guideline-Based Clinical Assessment Versus Procalcitonin-Guided Antibiotic Use in Pneumonia: A Pragmatic Randomized Trial.

Study Objective: Efforts to reduce unnecessary and unnecessarily long antibiotic treatment for community-acquired pneumonia have been attempted through use of procalcitonin and through guidelines based on serial clinical assessment. Our aim is to compare guideline-based clinical assessment- and procalcitonin algorithm-guided antibiotic use among patients with community-acquired pneumonia.

Methods: We performed a pragmatic, randomized, multicenter trial from November 2012 to April 2015 at 12 French hospitals.