ABSTRACT
Antimicrobial drug resistance constitutes a major problem in both developing and developed countries, yet, despite stories in the media that gain the attention of the public for one or two news cycles each year, resistance as a public health problem is vastly underappreciated. In fact, patients today are contracting multidrug-resistant infections and are suffering higher levels of morbidity and mortality. While the connection between multidrug resistance and these poorer patient outcomes remains
controversial, the increased expense and stress to healthcare systems are undeniable. Most importantly, the number of therapeutic options for serious, life-threatening bacterial infections are becoming more limited specifi cally because of multidrug resistance. It is a common misconception that virtually all bacterial infections remain treatable with our current armamentarium of antibacterial drugs. In fact, untreatable, pan-resistant bacterial infections do occur and are becoming increasingly common. Furthermore, as stated above, deaths following bacterial infections are on the rise even in patients who are infected with bacteria that are ostensibly treatable with currently available drugs. This is undoubtedly because the sickest patients are those most at risk for multidrug-resistant infections, yet it is also a fact that otherwise healthy people are being infected with multidrug-resistant bacteria and these infections are now becoming increasingly prevalent in the community, whereas in the past they were almost solely a hospital problem. We have seen multiple reports of community-associated, multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections and these are increasing in frequency. In the past, physicians could reliably treat such infections with penicillin-like drugs, but this is no longer the case and has already led to changes in prescribing patterns that can be predicted to lead to even more multidrug-resistant strains proliferating in the community setting.
