Spreading antibiotic resistance could have disastrous consequences for patients undergoing surgery or chemotherapy, a study said on October 15. In the United States, up to half of infections after surgery and over a quarter of infections after chemotherapy are caused by organisms resistant to standard antibiotics, researchers found.
A 30-percent reduction in the efficacy of preventive antibiotics given to patients undergoing these procedures could result in 120,000 infections and 6,300 infection-related deaths each year in the United States alone, they predicted. "This is the first study to estimate the impact of antibiotic resistance on broader medical care in the United States," Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Centre for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy in Washington, said in a statement.
Antibiotics are routinely given as a precautionary measure to patients undergoing surgery and cancer treatment, to prevent infection.