Antibiotic Therapy in Acute Infectious Diarrhea and Clostridioides difficile Infection: Clinical Indications, Antimicrobial Stewardship, and Evidence Gaps

Background

Most acute gastrointestinal infections are self-limiting, but antibiotics remain essential for selected patients with severe, invasive, or high-risk disease. This narrative review examines when antibiotics should be started or withheld in adults and children with suspected or confirmed bacterial gastrointestinal infection, which regimens should be selected, and how treatment should be reassessed after diagnostic and susceptibility results become available.