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StaphAseptic™ News
Limit antibiotic use and reduce health care costs
November 16, 2009
Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel
By Bruce Barrett and Eric Uram
If there is one thing agreed on by all sides of the current debate over health care, it is that medical costs are rising to unsustainable levels. Politicians looking for the lowest-hanging fruit have pointed to the prevention of serious disease as a means of controlling costs, as this approach is cheaper than later treatment.
It is surprising, therefore, that greater attention has not been afforded to antibiotic-resistant diseases.
An article published this month in the peer-reviewed journal Clinical Infectious Diseases concluded that the combined hospital and societal costs from 188 patients with antibiotic-resistant infections at just one hospital amounted to more than $13 million, using conservative estimates.
Antibiotics were considered miracle drugs when they were discovered in the previous century. Today, they are already losing their ability to treat disease, and once-fatal diseases are increasingly becoming impervious to drug treatment again.
The way drug resistance develops is fairly simple: Antibiotics kill targeted bacteria, except a small percentage that have a mechanism that allows them to survive. These surviving bacteria - so-called superbugs - multiply, passing along their immunity to future generations. Because of the ease with which antibiotic resistance emerges, the medical community is learning to be judicious about administering antibiotic treatments.
But antibiotics are not being doled out so carefully in other places. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, an estimated 70% of the antibiotics and related drugs used in the United States are added to the feed and water of livestock and poultry that are not sick. The antibiotics are used not to treat diagnosed disease but to promote growth and to compensate for the overcrowded, stressful, unsanitary conditions in confined animal feeding operations...
This is a portion of the original article. To continue reading, visit JSOnline.com
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