Preventative antibiotics saves lives

Friday 02 January 2009

Administering antibiotics to intensive care patients before they develop infections does save lives, according to researchers at Utrecht University's medical centre.

'We have seen that using antibiotics clearly results in a reduction in the number of deaths and intensive care units should make use of this knowledge,' researcher Anne Marie de Smet told news agency Reuters.

The findings, published in a scientific journal, show that the benefit of giving patients antibiotics immediately outweighs the risk that they will develop resistance to them.

Drug-resistent infections like MRSA are a growing problem at hospitals worldwide. Such infections kill dozens of people in the Netherlands every year, and up to 19,000 in the US.

The researchers followed the progress of 6,000 patients at 13 hospitals between 2004 and 2006. Those given oral antibiotics were 11% less likely to die and those given oral and intravenous drugs were 13% less likely to die than the control group.

© DutchNews.nl

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