Over the 6 years from 2006 to 2012, 55 percent of the patients has received at least one dose of antibiotic during their hospital stay, irrespective of the need, mentioned researchers from US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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The report was published online September 19 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. That was essentially the same as in previous years, though concerns about their overuse and the rise of drug-resistant bacteria had been rising steadily for years.
“We’ve known for decades that there are too many antibiotics being used”, Dr. Mehrotra said in a report at UPI.
But the study also showed significant increases in the use of carbapenem antibiotics, third- and fourth-generation cephalosporins, beta-lactam/beta-lactamase inhibitor combination antibiotics, tetracyclines, and vancomycin.
When the United Nations General Assembly meets in NY this week, on the agenda will be the overuse of antibiotics and the rapid spread of bacteria resistant to those lifesaving drugs. Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School’s department of health care policy, said via Fox News, “In the hospital, where the sickest patients are, there’s been an increase in broad-spectrum antibiotics”. Mehrotra co-authored an accompanying journal editorial.
‘We don’t believe the reason broad spectrum antibiotics are overused is that physicians aren’t educated, ‘ he said.
In the meantime, it’s best not to use antibiotics unless they’re prescribed by your doctor. Among them is reframing the discussion around the potential harms of antibiotics to make them more salient to the patient. But doctors still give several patients antibiotics they do not necessarily need and even know that they are prescribing too many antibiotics, he continued.
Mehrotra said that strategies can be adopted as there are ways to get doctors to prescribe fewer antibiotics. In addition, patients can ask their doctor why antibiotics are being prescribed, and if they are really necessary.
Americans have developed a consistent use of antibiotics over the years.
Before the United Nations gathering, Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the nonprofit Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy, is scheduled to hold a meeting of health experts to focus attention on the problem.
“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.
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The study, published yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, analyzed discharge records from more than 34 million patients at more than 300 U.S. hospitals between 2006 and 2012, looking specifically at antibiotic doses administered to patients during their stay. The report said that may be due to increasing resistance to this class of drugs.
