Clinical experience with linezolid in internal medicine

To describe the use of linezolid in hospitalized patients in an Internal Medicine Service. Method: Observational, descriptive and retrospective study of the use of linezolid for 12 months in an Internal Medicine Service. Results: 88 patients were selected, with a median age of 83 years old. The most frequent indications were: skin and soft tissue infection, pneumonia and other infections. 63.6% of the treatments were initiated empirically. In 61.4% of the cases, the indication was not adjusted to the antibiotic's indication stated on the Summary of Product Characteristics (off-label use). Gram-positive bacteria were isolated in 62% of the cultures, all of them sensitive to vancomycin and linezolid. Only linezolid therapeutic steep-down was performed in 13.9% of the patients. Conclusions: Linezolid is often used for unlabeled indications and fundamentally empirically. In many cases, no therapeutic steep-down of linezolid was performed after knowing the results of the microbiological cultures