Shorter stay, lower costs for Tan Tock Seng patients

QX179R SG

SINGAPORE : Singapore's Tan Tock Seng Hospital said its antibiotics programme, started in 2009, has led to reduced costs and shorter stays for patients.

The programme helps doctors customise doses in a targeted way to stop viruses from becoming "superbugs".

With this method, the hospital said the occurrence of drug-resistant bugs decreased by 30 per cent.

During the past two years, the treatment has not seen an increase in the number of hospital deaths even with 15 per cent less antibiotics used.

The annual increase in antibiotic cost has also decreased from 9 per cent in 2009 to 6 per cent last year.

Dr David Lye, a consultant at the Department of Infectious Diseases, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, said: "We now realise that, in fact, most infections can be treated for a far shorter period than we used to treat them - this is from scientific research.

"And we are trying to promote this principle of using just the right amount of antibiotics for the right duration to give the patient the best outcome."

- CNA/al

BanguIzai SG

Hope antibiotics are not used persistently on people because antibiotics has long term detrimental effect to the health of a person.

BanguIzai SG

http://www.healthychild.com/pharmaceutical-drugs/consequences-of-excessive-antibiotic-use/

Consequences of Excessive Antibiotic Use

Antibiotics do not just go after the pathogenic or “bad” bacteria. They also indiscriminately destroy the beneficial bacteria necessary and vital to good health. Among the more important beneficial bacteria are lactobacillus acidophilus and bifidobacterium bifidus. They help protect the body against infection. Depleting these organisms can disrupt the balance of the body, suppress immunity, and lead to increased susceptibility to infections by fungi, bacteria, viruses and parasites. Additionally, when antibiotics are used excessively, depleting the beneficial bacteria, there may be an overgrowth of yeast in the body. A yeast infection can suppress immunity, which may lead to recurrent infections.

What's more, antibiotics adversely affect many nutrients, particularly the ones needed by the immune system to fight infection, such as vitamins A and C. One of the most common side effects of antibiotics is diarrhea. This causes a loss of nutrients, especially magnesium and zinc. Some children are on antibiotics for months or even years. Nutritional loss over such a long period of time is debilitating for the body and sets up an environment for more infections.

BanguIzai SG

http://allonhealth.com/liver-cleanse/antibiotocs-liver.htm

The liver has very complicated functions and one of the most important is the detoxification of drugs such as antibiotics and its metabolites. Some antibiotics can cause allergic reactions while others can cause direct damage to their liver, which can be quite severe in patients with chronic liver disease. For patients with a pre-existing liver disorder, the detoxification function of the liver is already compromised and substances that would normally be metabolized could actually accumulate in the liver or in the bloodstream. Antibiotics that accumulate in this manner could become toxic to the body and its functions can change drastically from its original purpose.

The following is a list of the most common antibiotics groups being used today. Each is ordered according to their potential harmful effects on the liver, the top group being the most potentially harmful and the last group being the least.

BanguIzai SG

http://www.worldwidehealthcenter.net/articles-264.html

ANTIBIOTICS - TO TAKE OR NOT TO TAKE?

QX179R SG

but antibiotics are meant to kill the baddies in our bodies..

and if you noticed, must always complete the antibiotics as the doc says..

BanguIzai SG

Antibiotics kill baddies as well as goodies. Doctors are trained not to tell us the whole truth. Society is trained to follow what the doctors say. Antibiotics gets stayed in the liver and the liver will cause complication when we are older age when our immune system drop. The society nowadays is only concerned about short tem and not long term consequences anymore. We can try reduce going seeing doctor or request to doctor not to have antibiotics in our prescription. We should let our body heal naturally even though it takes longer rather than hasten it and spoil it.

Much like we rather eat natural kampung chicken which takes 3 months to grow rather than eat the mass production chicken which takes 1 week to grow through injection of chemicals. We looking for our death.