{"id":1983962,"date":"2019-02-14T16:27:22","date_gmt":"2019-02-14T21:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/?p=1983962"},"modified":"2019-02-14T16:27:22","modified_gmt":"2019-02-14T21:27:22","slug":"fluoroquinolones-antibiotics-infections-1983962-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/fluoroquinolones-antibiotics-infections-1983962-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Many hospitals send patients home with high-risk antibiotics"},"content":{"rendered":"
Even as hospitals try to cut back on prescribing fluoroquinolones\u2014powerful but risky antibiotics\u2014many patients still head home with prescriptions for those same drugs, a new study shows.<\/p>\n
In fact, the hospitals that say they are trying to reduce the use of fluoroquinolones are twice as likely to discharge patients with a new prescription for one of the drugs in that risky group.<\/p>\n
In all, one-third of the patients researchers studied received a fluoroquinolone prescription at the end of their hospital stay, despite current guidelines calling for restricted use because of dangerous side effects.<\/p>\n
FDA warnings<\/h3>\n
Fluoroquinolones include name brands like Cipro and Levaquin and generic antibiotics whose names end in “-floxacin.” They have been especially linked to the rise of drug-resistant organisms and potentially life-threatening gut infections with an opportunistic microbe called Clostridioides difficile<\/em>.<\/p>\n
They are also linked to ruptures of Achilles tendons, dangerously low blood sugar levels in people with diabetes, and mental health problems including disorientation and delirium.<\/p>\n
The US Food and Drug Administration has issued several “black box” warnings about their side effects\u2014most recently in December with a warning that fluoroquinolones could cause rupture of the aorta, the huge artery leading from the heart to the rest of the body.<\/p>\n
That warning suggests doctors should not prescribe the drugs to the elderly, people with high blood pressure, and people with a risk or history of aneurysms.<\/p>\n
Still, across all 48 Michigan hospitals in the study, discharge-related prescriptions accounted for two-thirds of the fluoroquinolone supply prescribed to the nearly 12,000 patients treated for pneumonia or urinary tract infections.<\/p>\n
The drugs accounted for 42 percent of all antibiotics prescribed at discharge.<\/p>\n
“Fluoroquinolone antibiotics are easy to use but carry a lot of risk for patients and society at large,” says Valerie Vaughn, a hospital medicine specialist at Michigan Medicine, the University of Michigan’s academic medical center, and lead author of the paper, which appears in Clinical Infectious Diseases<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n