CLINICAL MICROBIOLOGY OF COMMON BACTERIAL INFECTIONS: DIAGNOSIS, TREATMENT, AND ANTIMICROBIAL RESISTANCE

Abstract

Bacterial infections are still a major health issue worldwide due to their high prevalence, clinical significance and rising antimicrobial resistance. The clinical microbiology of common bacterial infections will be discussed, with emphasis on how to make the diagnosis, as well as on the antibiotics options for treatment, the mechanisms of antibiotic resistance and on new developments in antibiotic therapy. Conventional microbiological methods will remain important for pathogen identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing for the purposes of guiding therapy and selection of pathogens. New molecular diagnosis, genome sequencing and rapid detection technologies can help increase the accuracy of diagnosis and help to implement timely clinical interventions. However, with the increase in the prevalence of multidrug resistant (MDR) organisms, the choice of antibiotic is becoming more challenging and the need for treatment failure and the burden of care is increasing. Antimicrobial stewardship, evidence-based prescribing, infection prevention and resistance surveillance are important in reducing the use of inappropriate antibiotics, and bacterial transmission. Newly developed techniques such as artificial intelligence, precision medicine, new antimicrobials and bacteriophage therapy are likely to add to the robustness of infection management. Increased diagnostics, susceptibility data, and integrated public health response efforts are essential to enable a more robust clinical response and address AMR.