A Patient Has a Staphylococcal Infection of the Blood; a Septicemia

question 3

Multiple Choice

A patient has a staphylococcal infection of the blood; a septicemia - very serious and possibly deadly. As the doctor, you would like to prescribe a relatively non-toxic and inexpensive drug out of the cephalosporin family. However, if the patient harbors a strain of Staphylococcus that is resistant
To a variety of antibiotics, you would prefer to use vancomycin-- which is highly effective against staphylococcus. Which of the following explains why the cephalosporin drug is preferred for use over the vancomycin?

• A) You would rather give an inexpensive drug to save the family money.
• B) You really do not know that much about vancomycin, so you would rather go with a drug that you can ?nd out more about.
• C) Vancomycin is very toxic, and the Staphylococcus strain could become resistant leaving no back-up drugs with which to treat the infection.
• D) Vancomycin is one of the most selectively toxic drugs there is, so you would prefer one that has a more broad-spectrum effect.

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Definitions:

Simple Linear Regression

A statistical method for modeling the relationship between a single independent variable and a dependent variable by fitting a linear equation to observed data.

Least Squares

A mathematical method used to determine the best-fitting line through a set of data points by minimizing the sum of the squares of the differences between observed and estimated values.

Standard Deviation

A measure of the dispersion or variability of a set of data points around the mean, indicating how spread out the data points are.

SPSS

Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, a software package used for data management and statistical analysis.