Question

One of the attending Physicians in your clinic is known for prescribing broad-spectrum antibiotics for patients. What is wrong with this approach and what would be a better way to prescribe antibiotics.

Answer 1

Ans) The antibiotics are always preferred by the doctor or phyisicans to treat several conditions like food poisioning caused by E.coli, skin infection by staphylococcus aureus,common cold etc.The antibiotics works by inhibiting the peptidoglycan synthesis thereby inhibiting cell wall formation,inhibition of protein synthesis or translation,etc.The antibiotics preferred should not be a broad spectrum antibiotic because it can cause the formation of mutri drug resistant strains against the antibiotics which are very hard to treat later since the bacteria can get resistant to drugs. Broad spectrum antibiotics should be prescribed only when it is really needed to treat any serious conditions in emergency like staphylococcus infections in the open wound in the diabetes patient is very fatal (If such infection spreads in diabetic patient or immunocompromised patient,they would have to pass through even amputation of the infected organs),In Tuberculosis infections broad spectrum antibiotics is required and in many other serious conditions.

The corect way to prescribe antibiotics is as follows "

For example in UTI (urinary tract infection),which can be caused by Klebsiella pneumoniae etc,the urine culture aerobe test is used to streak the patient's infected sample on the culture plate to determine which organism is usually infecting. Once it is found, the specific antibiotic against that particular bacteria is prescribed rather than using broad spectrum antibiotic to kill all range of bacteria.This is the correct way to prescribe antibiotic.