FASAVA Congress 2017

Antibacterial drugs can be life-saving and are essential tools in the fight against disease. However, their widespread use in humans and animals in the past eight decades has resulted in increasing levels of bacterial resistance which is threatening their efficacy and forcing us to contemplate whether a post-antibiotic world is a real possibility. The focus on using antibacterials wisely and well has never been more important for our own health and that of our pets and patients. In this lecture we will discuss what drugs are effective against which bugs, when and where antibiotics are indicated and very importantly, when they are not, how we can choose appropriate drugs even if the results of culture and susceptibility are not available, and how we reduce the risk that the treatment we prescribe will encourage the development of resistance.