Current place of probiotics for VAP

Excerpt

With the advent of new technological advancements, our understanding of the gut microbes, their functionality and their roles in critical illness has advanced greatly. The microbiome of ICU patients is characterised by a loss of diversity, site specificity, microbial richness and overgrowth of pathogens, inclining towards a single taxon [1, 2]. Despite a lag in understanding behind application, an emerging number of studies now focus on the use of probiotics as offering promise to ICU patients for the prevention of antibiotic-associated diarrhoea, Clostridium difficile infections, multi-organ dysfunction, sepsis in neonates and—most notably—ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) [3‐5]. …