Biology Seminar: Dr. George Sakoulas
The paradigms of treating bacterial infections were established based on fairly arbitrary clinical decisions early in the clinical antibiotic era of the 1940's and 1950's. Treatment durations and the use of single antibiotics were decided upon a much different host profile of patients than the contemporary patient population. Today's antibiotic-receiving patients are older, have more medical problems, are immunocompromised, and may even have infected biomedical devices (prosthetic joints, pacemakers, mechanical valves) that did not exist 80 years ago.