The authors found that, overall, 55% of patients discharged received at least one dose of an antibiotic during their hospital visit.
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Signatories to the United Nations declaration committed to encouraging innovation in antibiotic development, increasing public awareness of the threat and developing surveillance and regulatory systems on the use and sales of antimicrobial medicine for humans and animals. More concerning is that the findings indicate that the use of newer, broad-spectrum antibiotics is on the rise.
However, there was a significant increase in the average change over time for the use of third- and fourth-generation cephalosporins, macrolides, glycopeptides, β-lactam/β-lactamase inhibitor combinations, carbapenems and tetracyclines. Moreover, according to the research, the total national days of therapy (DOT) was 755 for every 1,000-patient -day.
“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”, said James Baggs, an epidemiologist at CDC and lead author of the study, in a report from Reuters.
“Use of some antibiotics, especially broad spectrum agents, however, has increased significantly”, the study said.
Over 2 million Americans are infected each year with bacteria that doesn’t respond to existing antibiotics.
Presently doctors have seen many multi-drug resistant infections, which can not be cured with medication. Greater reliance on vancomycin could be a response to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections. “This trend is worrisome in light of the rising challenge of antibiotic resistance”.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), patients who are unnecessarily exposed to antibiotics are placed at risk for serious adverse events with no clinical benefit.
The study notes limitations related to the use of administrative data.
‘In the hospital, where the sickest patients are, there’s been an increase in broad-spectrum antibiotics, ‘ said Dr. Ateev Mehrotra of Harvard Medical School, who coauthored a commentary in the journal.
“This is about the fact that doctors are human – doctors think patients want antibiotics”, Mehrotra said. Companies that raise livestock routinely prescribe antibiotics to try to stave off costly infections in herds and flocks.
To address this problem, Mehrotra suggests several strategies. They also found that antibiotics are often started before a full diagnosis is made.
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Doctors and scientists have long warned about the problem, which is being propelled by the way antibiotics are misused.
