Hospitals Going Overboard on Dispensing Antibiotics
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iStock/Thinkstock(ATLANTA) — If one antibiotic is effective in knocking out an infection, can several at once do the job even better?
That seems to be the prevailing attitude in a lot of hospitals these days but a new first-of-its kind study warns that doctors should pull back from prescribing multiple antibiotics because they might wind up being useless overkill.
According to Dr. Arjun Srinivasan of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other researchers, about 75 percent of 500 hospitals studied kept patients on more than one antibiotic for more than two days even when additional medications are supposed to be dropped once an infection is identified.
The study also pointed to almost two dozen antibiotic combinations that should be rarely if ever used, even before doctors start them on patients.
Among the drawbacks of needless multiple antibiotics are side-effects such as diarrhea, not to mention that they all drive up hospital costs.
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