Discuss strategies used to reduce resistance to antibiotics. Describe improvements in treatment of infections due to resistant bacteria. Describe managed care trends that influence antibiotic selection and usage. Describe the impact of resistance on treatment of infectious diseases. Explain how health policy-makers in Finland succeeded in reducing levels of macrolide resistance.
Physicians often administer antibiotics in combinations of two or more agents.
Combinations of antibiotics provide a broad spectrum of activity when the infection involves multiple species of bacteria or, more frequently, when the causative pathogen has not been identified and no single agent is effective against all possibilities. Physicians may also prescribe combinations of antibiotics because the agents exhibit synergistic activity. Combination therapy also may be used to prevent or counter antibiotic resistance. Multiple-drug treatment of tuberculosis has become common practice wherever resistant strains are likely to occur. A cornerstone of any plan to combat antibiotic-resistant infections is minimization of selective pressures that favor the survival and proliferation of resistant bacterial strains.