The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that these “superbugs” cause 2 million illnesses and 23,000 deaths each year in the USA alone.
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“While the optimal level of antibiotic use or distribution of classes is not really known for every hospital, we know from other studies that inpatient prescribing of antibiotics for some infections is often inappropriate”, lead author James Baggs told Reuters Health.
Experts have warned that overprescribing antibiotics can drive drug-resistant bacteria.
In the most comprehensive study ever of antibiotic use in hospitals, CDC researchers looked at antibiotic prescribing patterns in nearly 300 hospitals across the country, including 34 million hospital patients.
In 2012, CDC launched a real-time monitoring option for antibiotic use in USA hospitals as part of the National Healthcare Safety Network. Overall, for every 1,000 days of hospitalization, 775 days included antibiotic therapy.
Researchers believe this trend is a result of doctors not being aware of proper treatment guidelines.
Another big problem is the increase of broad-spectrum antibiotics, which have become more popular in recent years.
“Overall DOT of all antibiotics among hospitalized patients in United States hospitals has not changed significantly in recent years”, the researchers wrote in their study. Though overall antibiotic use stayed the same during the six-year study, the team found that use of third-and-fourth generation cephalosporins, macrolides, glycopeptides, carbapenems, and tetracyclines rose by a large margin.
Ateev Mehrotra, from Harvard Medical School, said that there has been an increase in broad-spectrum antibiotics in hospitals where the sickest patients are.
Mehrotra, who co-authored an accompanying journal editorial, said that increase in use of this class of antibiotics raises concern as this could lead to bacteria that are broadly resistant.
“We don’t believe the reason broad spectrum antibiotics are overused is that physicians aren’t educated”, he said. But doctors still give several patients antibiotics they do not necessarily need and even know that they are prescribing too many antibiotics, he continued.
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“In fact, we now have many multidrug-resistant infections that are not treatable with any antibiotics we have, and consequently there is now a call for global action to solve the problem”, Laxminarayan said.
