Drug sensitivity test
Drug resistance is a familiar term to many of us. The drug resistant bacteria develop or acquire techniques to bypass the action of antibiotics. When the bacteria develop this protective mechanism against many antibiotics, they are generally termed as multi-drug resistant bacteria. But a certain type of bacteria usually doesn't have resistance mechanism against all available antibiotics, rather this mechanism is developed against most frequently used antibiotics.
So, the success rate of treatment depends on the choice of the appropriate antibiotic to which the pathogenic bacteria is sensitive. Drug sensitivity test provides information about which antibiotics are still effective and which are not. In this test, pathogenic bacteria are isolated from the specimens such as blood, sputum, stool etc and then the bacteria are tested against numerous antibiotics. The antibiotics that can effectively inhibit growth of bacteria in test media are considered as effective antibiotic.
In absence of drug sensitivity test, antibiotics are prescribed alternatively one after another or antibiotics of different groups are prescribed at time. This practice may arise the problems such as:
The selection of drug on trial and error basis may take many days, even weeks. The infectious disease might be of such kind that if appropriate antibiotic therapy is not initiated, the disease conditions may deteriorate rapidly . Prescribing many antibiotics at a time for the same indications increases the risk of diseases of our vital organs such kidney impairment etc.
Drug sensitivity test thus ensures the success of treatment. But this test takes at least three days to complete. ICDDRB, many hospitals, diagnostic centres and many other organisations have facilities for doing this test.
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