07 April,2011 06:00 AM IST | | Alifiya Khan
Sassoon data shows 25% of patients out of 6,000 tested over six months didn't respond to even highest level of antibiotics; docs worry rampant self-medication making bugs resistant to drugs
On World Health Day today there is something that the healthcare fraternity -- and you -- should be very worried about. MiD DAY has obtained figures from the microbiology department of Sassoon General Hospital which show that one in four patients tested over the past six months showed little response to even the highest level of antibiotics.
Grim findings: Sassoon microbiologists say the highest level of drugs
were not helpful in treating 25% of the patients tested, as the bacteria
infecting them had become resistant to antibiotics. Representation Pic
This means that the patients were not responding to the most superior antibiotics available for treatment and now had nothing but their own immune system to fight the disease. Speaking to MiD DAY, Dr Renu Bharadwaj, head of microbiology department and acting dean of the hospital, said that the figures had got them extremely worried.
"In the microbiology department, doctors send us blood samples of patients for tests. We conduct drug sensitivity tests to determine what infection the patient has contracted and what medicine can work on it. This helps doctors determine the course of treatment," she said.
According to information shared by Bharadwaj, in the past six months about 6,000 blood samples of patients suffering from various diseases were tested. Of these, 1,700 tested positive for gram negative bacteria and 800 tested positive for gram positive bacteria. "The shocking part was that 60 per cent of these patients showed multi-drug resistance, or they did not improve even after trying a combination of antibiotics. The worst part was that 25 per cent of these patients didn't even show sensitivity towards immipenem, which is one of highest antibiotics available," said Bharadwaj.
She added that in 2007 the percentage of patients who did not respond to the highest level of antibiotics was 14 per cent.
Asked what the findings meant, she said that the highest level of drugs available were not helpful in treating these patients as the bacteria that had infected them had developed resistance to the drugs. "It simply meant that these patients had to rely on their immune system to fight back the disease as medication could barely help them," she said. Even more serious is the fact that 5 per cent to 10 per cent of these samples were not from admitted patients, ruling out the possibility of hospital-acquired infections.
"This means that they got infected by these superbugs resistant to multiple antibiotics in the community. This is quite possible as the patients self-medicate, or physicians randomly prescribe high-end antibiotics, which leads to widespread resistance to antibiotics. It is not necessary to be in a hospital to get such infections, you could easily get it out on the streets too," said microbiologist Dr Anju Kagal.
