An article in this week’s issue of Time states that a wound should be treated with just soap and water and then covered with a sterile bandage, but it’s OK to use a topical antibiotic for a day or two. Why limit the duration of the use of a topical antibiotic? Wouldn’t it make more sense to continue using it daily until the wound is covered over with skin?
If an antibiotic delays healing, how?
Taking antibiotics when they are not needed contributes to the growing problem of antibiotic resistant bacteria. These bacteria cause serious illnesses and can be spread to others in the community. Source here.
Because antibiotics were such a revolutionary advance in the treatment of infectious diseases, doctors slipped into the habit of prescribing them for minor illnesses, even those known to be viral, just to “be on the safe side.” They also thought they might help the child get better a bit faster. Now we know that the opposite is true. This practice is harmful to children and to the environment by selectively breeding ever-more frightening bacteria. Children may get better a bit quicker at first, but then they are likely to get sick more often, with longer, more stubborn infections caused by more resistant organisms. Source here.
A growing body of evidence shows that the overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture contributes to antibiotic resistance, an emerging public health problem and a significant threat to human health. Source here.
The historical scourge known as the bubonic plague killed up to one-third of Europe’s population in the 1300s. But in modern times, it has been controlled handily with the help of antibiotic drugs such as streptomycin, gentamicin and chloramphenical. That is, until 1995, when a plague infection in a 16-year-old boy from Madagascar failed to respond to the usual antibiotic treatments. This first documented case of an antibiotic-resistant plague, reported in the September 1997 New England Journal of Medicine, eventually succumbed to another antibiotic.
“What’s different now,” explains David Bell, M.D., an expert on antimicrobial resistance with the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “is that we’ve reached a situation where it’s no longer an isolated problem of this bug or that bug; virtually all important human pathogens treatable with antibiotics have developed some resistance.” Source here.
Staphylococcus aureus, commonly known as Golden Staph because of its colour on a laboratory plate, is normally harmless. Carried on our skin it can, sometimes, cause minor infections in wounds or create boils.
Golden Staph, though, is becoming resistant to the most powerful of antibiotics and returning as a big problem in most large Australian hospitals, attacking intravenous lines, catheters and wounds after operations. It spreads quickly through patient contact, respiratory droplets and food. These resistant bacteria range from 20 to 40 percent of all Golden Staph infections in major eastern Australian hospitals. About 5 percent of those multi resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) can only be treated with vancomycin. Now, even that last line of defence is looking shaky. In 1997, a Golden Staph bacterium partially resistant to vancomycin was discovered in Japan. Dubbed to be of intermediate resistance it is now known as vancomycin intermediate Staphylococcus aureus (VISA). Source here.
The point I am making is overuse as well as misuse of antibiotics increases the emergence of superbugs resistant to antibiotics.
Antibiotic overkill does more harm than good.
These are topical antibiotics. They are placed on the skin and not taken internally. Does that same argument hold for topical antibiotics as opposed to systemic?
I suggest you reread the last cite I used.
Also, search under “superbugs” on Google.
OK, but aren’t these topical antibiotic creams needed until the wound is closed to the outside world, which usually takes more than a day or two?