Loeb minimum criteria (initiating antibiotics in LTC)
Loeb minimum criteria (2001): the consensus minimum threshold to initiate antibiotics in a long-term-care resident.
Open the calculator → Runs in your browser. Data leaves only if you deliberately send a problem report from the interactive tool.
Example
- Suspected infection site
- Urinary tract — without indwelling catheter
- Acute dysuria
- Yes
Result: Minimum criteria MET to initiate antibiotics — Urinary tract — without indwelling catheter.
The tool opens with these values already filled in. Replace them with your own.
What the result means
- Purpose
- Stewardship decision support for whether the minimum threshold to START antibiotics is met — it neither orders nor withholds therapy.
- MET
- The selected site’s minimum criteria are satisfied (e.g., acute dysuria alone meets the non-catheter UTI path).
- NOT MET
- The minimum threshold is unsatisfied; the blocking gap is named. The prescriber and local protocol decide.
What you enter
- Suspected infection site
- Acute dysuria
- Fever (> 37.9 °C / 100 °F or ≥ 1.5 °C / 2.4 °F above baseline)
- New or worsening urinary urgency
- New or worsening urinary frequency
- New or worsening suprapubic pain
- New or worsening gross hematuria
- New or worsening costovertebral angle tenderness
The other 18 fields
- New or worsening urinary incontinence
- Rigors
- New onset of delirium
- Fever > 38.9 °C / 102 °F
- Cough
- Productive cough
- Respiratory rate > 25 breaths/min
- Pulse > 100 beats/min
- Afebrile resident with COPD and > 65 years
- Afebrile resident without COPD
- New or increased cough
- Purulent sputum production
- New infiltrate on chest x-ray thought to represent pneumonia
- New or increasing purulent drainage at a wound, skin, or soft-tissue site
- Redness
- Tenderness
- Warmth
- New or increasing swelling
How this is calculated
Loeb M, Bentley DW, Bradley S, et al. Development of minimum criteria for the initiation of antibiotics in residents of long-term-care facilities: results of a consensus conference. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol. 2001;22(2):120-124. Read the source ↗
A reference and educational tool. Not medical, legal, or financial advice, and not a substitute for clinician judgment.