Spent today observing clinical practice at a local ER. I tip my hats to the doctors, nurses and administrators who work the ER, it's exhausting. Just 4 or so hours there and I was tired (but incredibly interested).

I was especially interested in the lab reports for various patients and the frequencies and correlations for various bacteriological problems. Lots of E Coli UTIs, lesser amounts of other UTIs, and a few wound or blood based staphylococcus aureus.

It was good to see the lab results showed some drug resistances, but given testing against a complement of 6-10 antibiotics, each culture was susceptible to at least one or two common antibiotics, including the Staph Aureus.

One of the more interesting ones was a majorly resistant e coli strain. It was resistant to many of the beta lactam derivative antibiotics, but did now show signs of a plasmid mediated beta-lactamase, one route of resistance for cephalosporins, penicillins, and aztreonam. Apparently several different routes for antibiotic resistance exist, including modifying their DNA gyrase, creating cellular membrane pumps to remove antibiotics, and methylating their ribosomes to deactivate antibiotic binding.




- posted by Aargau @ 8:53 PM