Antibiotics for Chronic Bronchitis

Howard: I am Howard and I am from Florida. And my question is, should I take antibiotics for my chronic bronchitis?

Charlie Strange: There is a special complication of chronic bronchitis Howard that we really are focusing when we ask the antibiotic question, and that's the thing called exacerbation. Exacerbation is a big doctor's word, and all it really means is that the mucus has gotten larger in volume or changed in color or so shaded with more shortness of breath in your condition.

So, in these chronic bronchitis exacerbations, a lot of doctors' studies have gone down into the airways to figure out how many times there are actually bacteria that would respond to antibiotics in the airway. And the answer is about half of the time.

So, if we are going to flip a coin, whether there are germs there or not, germs there, then some people would want the antibiotic every time, others would try and reserve those antibiotics for particularly the times where sputum color change or more shortness of breath is available. The worst the underlying lung disease, the more commonly we use the antibiotics in this scenario.


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