Antibiotic Resistance

Antibiotic resistance has become a major issue in health care throughout the world. Many important and serious bacterial infections in the U.S. are becoming resistant to antibiotics. Bacteria have an ability to adapt to reduce the effectiveness of antibiotics and allow them to survive and multiply. This limits our treatment choices, making it more difficult to care for and more expensive to treat these infections. These more virulent strains of bacteria can then be spread from person to person causing serious illness or even death.

In our own community, there have been cases of young, healthy people dying from pneumonia caused by resistant "streptococcus pneumoniae" bacteria. In addition, we are seeing more and more serious skin infections as a result of a resistant "staphylococcus aureus," (referred to as MRSA). Untreated, it can lead to more serious overwhelming infection.

Misuse and overuse of antibiotics promotes the development of these resistant bacteria. It is our responsibility as health care providers to educate the public and make the right choices when prescribing antibiotics. It is our patients' responsibility to work with us and understand that colds and viral illnesses do not require antibiotics.

Visit www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/community/anitbiotic-resistance.htm to learn more about antibiotic resistance.