The trouble with antibiotics

Abstract

During the long history of antibiotics, resistance of causative agents of main infectious diseases was estimated as a very serious threat to effective treatment of patients and as a social and economic problem faced by the entire mankind. The activities performed by the medical society provided no significant effect resulting in growing antibiotic resistance. The pandemic of novel coronavirus infection only made things worse. It became a new challenge for the medical community regarding searching solutions which are clinical, organizational and methodological by nature in the global struggle with resistance to antibiotics. The reviews of several studies of coronaviral infections have shown that treatment with antibiotics failed to correlate with the decreased all-cause mortality. In this work, we have reviewed some aspects of therapy with antibiotics, including ethical ones. Ethical aspects of antibiotic therapy concern decisions of physicians about administration of commonly unnecessary antimicrobial agents.