AntibioticsUpdate

Antiobitics Before Infections Save Lives

Giving antibiotics to patients in intensive care units as a precaution saves lives, according to a major Dutch study published recently. The findings in the New England Journal of Medicine suggest the benefits of administering antibiotics right away, even before an infection develops, outweigh the risks people will develop resistance to them, the researchers said.

"We have seen that using antibiotics clearly results in a reduction in the number of deaths and intensive care units should make use of this knowledge," Anne Marie de Smet, a researcher at University Medical Center Utrecht,” said in a statement.

Drug-resistant bacteria are a growing problem in hospitals worldwide, marked by the rise of superbugs such as Methicillin-Resistant Staphyloccus aureus or MRSA. Such infections kill about 19,000 people a year in the US while more than 4,000 a year in Britain are infected.

The World Health Organisation cites hospital-acquired infections as a major cause of death and disability worldwide and experts have been saying for year that poor hospital practices spread dangerous bacteria. At the same time, doctors are told to cut back on using antibiotics to prevent the rise of resistant ‘superbugs.’

The infections can cause life-threatening and disfiguring infections that can kill within days and can often only be treated with expensive, intravenous antibiotics. The risk of infection increases the longer people remain in the hospital.

De Smet and colleagues looked at 6,000 men and women who stayed in intensive care units for at least two days at 13 hospitals in the Netherlands to compare the effects of different antibiotic treatments.

Reuters Health