Journal Articles

Should antimicrobial dressings be classified according to their activity and be subject to stewardship like antibiotics?

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Should antimicrobial dressings be classified according to their activity and be subject to stewardship like antibiotics?

Elizabeth Nichols, Joy Tickle, Pam Spruce, Samantha Westgate, Valerie Edward-Jones
27 May 2019

We are facing a huge future crisis regarding the treatment of infection caused by antimicrobial resistance (AMR) that has developed in many common bacterial pathogens. Although seen across the board in all microbes, antibiotic resistance in bacteria is, without doubt, the most alarming. We have become so accustomed to successfully treating bacterial infection with antibiotics that, over the past fifty years, they have been used sometimes inappropriately. Recent research has shown that 1 in 3 people will be given antibiotics in any one year and that at least 20% of these are given inappropriately (Smith et al, 2018). Since the introduction of antimicrobial stewardship in all healthcare facilities, we have seen the numbers of prescriptions for antibiotics drop overall by 4.5% between 2013 and 2017 (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence [NICE], 2018) and this is expected to continue.

 

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