Going to the doctor is about to change
Ever entered the doctor’s surgery with the sniffles and come out with a prescription for antibiotics? You’re not alone. According to a study published by the Medical Journal of Australia, over two million antibiotics are unnecessarily prescribed to people suffering the common cold. As a result, we’re developing resistance to the drugs at an alarming rate.
Thankfully, a new report has found that the “wait and see” approach could be the solution to curbing over-prescription of antibiotics.
Dr Geoff Spurling from the University of Queensland is dubbing it a “revolution”, saying their review reveals that by not immediately giving patients antibiotics, more often than not, they recover on their own.
Dr Spurling and his colleagues examined 11 trials involving over 3,500 participants who were told to wait up to 48 hours to see if their symptoms had improved. The results were astonishing.
“The findings of this review are reassuring on all these fronts,” Dr Spurling said. “Antibiotic use fell from 93 per cent in the immediate antibiotic group to 31 per cent in the delayed antibiotic group. This is a really big reduction.”
“If doctors used this strategy every time they felt uncomfortable about refusing antibiotics, but didn’t think immediate antibiotics were necessary, then it could make a big impact on antibiotic use, and therefore resistance.”
The new findings could go a long way to reducing the rate at which bacteria become resistant to drugs, something which could inevitably lead to previously curable infections becoming untreatable.
“For some infections we are on our last line of defence with no new antibiotics in the pipeline,” Dr Spurling revealed. “Imagine if we were unable to do routine orthopaedic surgery, treat cancers with chemotherapy, or if people started dying from an infected skin cut or a urine infection.”
“Delayed antibiotics is a safe and effective strategy which can make the job of reducing antibiotic use easier.”
Tell us in the comments below, what do you think about the “wait and see” approach?