Doctors often prescribe unnecessary antibiotics

Doctors often prescribe unnecessary antibiotics.

(12.09.2010) Antibiotics are losing their effect more and more, as many physicians are too frivolous with their use and therefore many pathogens have already developed resistance to the most common antibiotics. For example, reserve antibiotics are increasingly prescribed that should only be used if no other antibiotics are effective. With the consequence that even against the reserve antibiotics some multidrug resistant pathogens are already immune today.

The ARD Magazine „Plus minus“ has taken a closer look at the use of antibiotics among German physicians by sending healthy women to the doctor as a test and reporting the symptoms of cystitis. In doing so, 60 percent of physicians unnecessarily prescribed antibiotics, even if urine samples were taken that had a negative result. Some physicians also directly prescribe reserve antibiotics, and this is particularly critical against the background of the growing number of multidrug-resistant pathogens.

So the infection specialist Dr. Alexander Friedrich from the University Hospital Münster concluded that "the miracle weapon antibiotics dull“ and simple infections will not be treated in the future. Unless something fundamentally alters, we believe that from now on we will have to completely abandon the miraculous weapon antibiotics. And the health insurance companies also see the development with growing concern. For example, WIdO, the scientific institute of the AOK, is currently warning against the prescription of large quantities of antibiotics at the beginning of autumn. According to the institute, 80 percent of common colds are prescribed by German doctors antibiotics, although colds are usually viral infections in which antibiotics do not help anyway.

The development of multidrug-resistant pathogens is extremely favored by such an approach, so that the experts see urgent need for action at the level of health policy. It is urgent to draw up regulations in the form of laws to prescribe the proper use of antibiotics for doctors, as Dr. Alexander Friedrich. The corresponding reportage of the „plus minus“-The magazine will air on 14 September 2010 at 21.50 clock at the ARD. (Fp)

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Picture: Rainer Sturm