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medpundit |
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Tuesday, April 01, 2003Researchers looked at data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from outpatient clinics and found that the number of antibiotic prescriptions doctors wrote decreased roughly 17 percent from 1991 to 1999. However, prescriptions of broad-spectrum antibiotics roughly doubled - from 24 percent to 48 percent for adults and from 24 percent to 40 percent for children. Overusing broad-spectrum antibiotics is just as bad as overprescribing antibiotics in general when it comes to fostering bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Yet, just as there's pressure from patients to be treated, there's pressure to select certain drugs. I can't tell you how often I've been told that "amoxicillin isn't strong enough," or that "only Cipro works for me." Those are beliefs that are very difficult to overcome, and trying to defeat them usually causes the "negative placebo effect" to kick in - when the treatment doesn’t work because the patient believes it won’t. posted by Sydney on 4/01/2003 08:13:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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