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ISSUE 2 APRIL
Letters to the Editor

Gentamicin: a great way to start

  • Grace Abdini, Melanie Jeyasingham

The Editorial Executive Committee welcomes letters, which should be less than 250 words. Before a decision to publish is made, letters which refer to a published article may be sent to the author for a response. Any letter may be sent to an expert for comment. When letters are published, they are usually accompanied in the same issue by their responses or comments. The Committee screens out discourteous, inaccurate or libellous statements. The letters are sub-edited before publication. Authors are required to declare any conflicts of interest. The Committee's decision on publication is final.

 

Letter to the Editor

Editor, – The editorial by Robert Moulds and Melanie Jeyasingham (Aust Prescr 2010;33:134-5) states that 'For ongoing directed gentamicin therapy, other monitoring recommendations remain unchanged'.

Could the authors kindly clarify this statement, that is, what other recommendations remain unchanged, and unchanged compared to what?

Grace Abdini
Senior clinical pharmacist
Pharmacy department
Mount Druitt Hospital, NSW

 

Author's comments

Melanie Jeyasingham, an author of the article, comments:

Apart from plasma concentration monitoring, other monitoring recommendations for ongoing use of gentamicin remain unchanged from the previous recommendations in Therapeutic Guidelines: Antibiotic, version 13 (2006). This includes recommendations to monitor serum creatinine and calculate creatinine clearance two or three times each week, or more frequently if renal function is very unstable. Patients should be regularly asked about any hearing or balance problems and told to report immediately if they occur. For prolonged aminoglycoside courses (more than 5 days), formal vestibular function testing and high-frequency audiometric testing should be considered if available.

Grace Abdini

Senior clinical pharmacist, Pharmacy department, Mount Druitt Hospital, NSW

Melanie Jeyasingham