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ANTIBIOTICS – BENEFITS AND RISKS
Antibiotics are like a double-edged sword!
Hello,
Antibiotics marked a major turning point in the history of human medicine, helping to save the lives of millions of people with dangerous infectious diseases. However, antibiotics, like all drugs, and like a double-edged sword, are already drugs that must be used correctly to be safe and effective.
Since antibiotics are drugs against bacterial infections, their uses require more special care compared to other drugs. Because the incorrect use of antibiotics will cause great harm not only to patients, but also harm that cannot be easily measured for the community, such as:
- Abuse of antibiotics easily causes great damage to the health of the patient, such as physical complications such as allergies, toxicity of internal organs, malnutrition or intestinal dysbacteriosis. Severe diarrhea …
- Arbitrary and indiscriminate use of antibiotics is easy to lead to other particularly serious consequences, affecting not only the individual patient, but also surrounding people.
For the individual patient, if there is antibiotic resistance of the bacteria, it will first become more difficult for the patient to treat the diseases caused by the bacteria. Then the community also suffered the same consequences. Because the antibiotic resistance of bacteria will replicate throughout the bacterial ecosystem throughout the living environment, including the aforementioned patient.
Antibiotic resistance not only develops within a certain strain with many generations of resistant progeny bacteria, but can also be replicated to other strains by passing resistance genes between strains. This bacterium along with other strains of bacteria follows the mechanism of “horizontal gene transfer”.
As a result, not only will a person like the above situation have difficulty dealing with a bacterial infection, but many people in the community will experience the same consequences.
Doctors will have to constantly search for new alternatives, while finding and manufacturing new drugs is not easy.
Even there are new drugs which are mostly stored as last solutions which will eventually become ineffective if given even a few but which are not correct. By a small number of cases that lead to antibiotic resistance strains of bacteria, leading to these antibiotic strains resistant bacteria flooding the living environment and causing damage to the whole community. Someday this new drug which becomes available for mass use will also become ineffective.
Some of the things mentioned above are trying to tell you how the harmful use of antibiotics can lead to negative consequences not only for yourself but for others as well.
5 PRINCIPLES OF USING ANTIBIOTICS
For the above reasons, each person should consciously use antibiotics in the right way, both to protect themselves and to protect others. And, should adhere to the following 5 basic principles:
1) Use the right antibiotics to kill target bacteria
We know that to speak of microorganisms in general means very small microorganisms, including bacteria, fungi and viruses.
However, influenza viruses often cause coughs and colds, mycelium can infect the skin, and pneumococcal bacteria can cause pneumonia. Thus, it is difficult to determine which disease to predict the cause of the microorganism (virus, fungus or bacteria) to choose drugs. Only a doctor who treats the treatment on the basis of treatment experience, on the basis of tests and the antibiogram can determine whether there is an infection or not.
In addition, there are actually diseases that can be caused not by just one but by many different microorganisms, such as sore throat.
A sore throat can be caused by bacteria or viruses. Therefore, to determine the correct cause of the virus or bacteria and which bacteria to make the decision to use antibiotics or not, if only caused by viruses, do not use antibiotics, if it is due to bacteria, you can use resistance. But if you are using antibiotics, which antibiotic should you use, what dose and for how long is the treatment planned to kill bacteria, help the patient to recover from the disease quickly and not cause antibiotic resistance in bacteria.
These are really no small challenges, requiring proper intervention and the advice of qualified and conscientious doctors.
2) Do not use antibiotics in case of viral illnesses such as influenza, cold
There are a lot of people who use antibiotics to a frightening degree that every time they catch a cold from whatever the cause, regardless of the symptoms like cough, sore throat etc. immediately take the antibiotic to drink.
You should know that, for diseases like colds, flu, most cases of sore throat, bronchitis (that is to say up to 90% of cases) are caused by viruses. Therefore, the antibiotic has no therapeutic effect in these cases.
Types of sore throat caused by bacterial strep throat (can account for up to 30% of sore throats in children and up to 15% of sore throats in adults). In these cases, antibiotic treatment is necessary. And, of course, follow the doctor’s instructions not only to ensure the safety and effectiveness of the treatment, but also to avoid antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria.
3) Use the right antibiotic, the right dose, the right way and the right duration
Use the right antibiotics to destroy the target good bacteria.
You should take the correct antibiotic prescribed by your doctor and take at the right time, at the right dose and for a full course of treatment. Do not stop the drug even if you feel better, avoid the survival bacteria which will recover and cause illnesses again with their increasing resistance to the drug.
Use the correct dose and long enough for the medicine to have enough effect to kill bacteria and prevent antibiotic resistance. Depending on the type of disease and the condition of the disease, the duration of antibiotics can be long or short, but usually not less than 5 days.
Usually, antibiotics are only used to kill existing bacteria, not antibiotics for prevention. However, in reality there are special cases where antibiotics are still prescribed as a preventive measure, for example the use of preventive antibiotics in surgery due to the risk of postoperative infections. Or, people with cured endocarditis still need to take antibiotics to prevent re-infection.
The combination of several antibiotics at the same time is only used when absolutely necessary and is always at the discretion of the doctor.
4) Do not share the antibiotics in the prescription with others
You must not give another antibiotic that has been prescribed for you, and vice versa, you must not use another person’s prescription to apply it to yourself. Because each person and each time have different physical conditions, doctors must prescribe different medications, tailored to each specific condition.
Therefore, even for yourself, a prescription cannot be applied forever, even if the disease reappears. But applying the prescription from one person to another is even more dangerous.
5) Only take antibiotics as prescribed by your doctor:
Prescribing antibiotics should be based on knowledge of the patient’s condition, especially pregnant women, the elderly, people with liver failure, kidney failure, etc.
Some illnesses need to be treated with antibiotics as soon as possible. For example, strep throat. It is an infection caused by a bacterial infection. If not treated properly and quickly, the disease can lead to complications such as inflammation of the kidneys or a low heart rate. Appropriate antibiotic treatment will help relieve symptoms, shorten the duration of illness, and reduce the risk of these complications. At the same time, help limit the spread of diseases to those around them.
I wish you good luck, goodbye and see you soon!
