Government Guidelines Target Emerging Superbug
The government warned hospitals and doctors Thursday to use antibiotics more sparingly to slow the development of germs impervious to anything medicine can hurl at them.
The overuse of antibiotics has been blamed for the dangerous proliferation of drug-resistant strains of bacteria. Antibiotics kill weak bacteria and leave the strongest to reproduce.
“This is a national problem, a significant crisis,” said Dr. Walter Hierholzer of Yale-New Haven Hospital, chairman of the government advisory committee that developed the recommendations.
The guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention focus on hospitals, where patients are most likely to catch the superbugs.
Some strains of the bacteria enterococci are even resistant to vancomycin, the antibiotic of last resort. Occasionally, these germs cause lethal bloodstream infections. However, they are usually a danger to only the sickest patients, whose immune systems are already weakened.
The guidelines:
Hospital labs should periodically test patients for vancomycin-resistant enterococci, or VRE.
Hospitals should isolate VRE-infected patients and make health care workers who treat them wear protective clothing.
Hospitals should improve simple housekeeping because VRE can live on dirty telephones, walls and patient charts.
Doctors shouldn’t prescribe antibiotics for viral illnesses, such as colds, because antiobiotics work only against bacteria.
Doctors shouldn’t prescribe antibiotics in low doses. Weak doses merely slow down the bugs and help create superbugs.