Muirhead CA, Lanocha N, Markwardt S, et al. - When antimicrobials, airway clearance, and nutrition, the mainstay of therapy for patients with an acute pulmonary exacerbation (APE) in cystic fibrosis (CF), fail to result in improvement, corticosteroids are added to therapy. The use of rescue steroids during CF APE treatment following at least 1 week of inpatient therapy without expected clinical improvement was retrospectively examined in a children's hospital. Researchers here studied a total of 106 encounters of 53 unique patients, aged 6–20 years, who had FEV1 percent predicted (FEV1pp) data at baseline, admission, midpoint, and discharge, and had admission duration of at least 12 days. Less improvement was reported at midpoint percent change from admission in FEV1pp for encounters treated with steroids (4.9 ± 11.3) relative to nonsteroid group change in FEV1pp (20.1 ± 24.6). Data overall suggest that rescue use of corticosteroids during APE does not predictably influence relevant outcome measures during CF APE treatment.