Question

Explain what you would teach a patient about the antibiotic and how it works. Also explain, what you would teach about the cranberry juice?

Answer 1

Any substance that kills the bacterium by inhibiting the growth and replication of bacterial cells are called as antibiotics.Antibiotics are medicines and is a type of antimicrobials designed to treat the bacterial infection in the body.With out proper education and misuse of taking antibiotics with out order results in an development of resistance towards the bacteria and thus leads when needed antibiotics cannot work against the bacteria because inappropriate usage of antibiotics results in a resistance develop by the bacteria towards the antibiotics.It is one of the most challenging problems in the health care today.So as a health care providers we have to adequately educate the patients regarding the antibiotics.

Antibiotics are very powerful for treating the bacterial infections if they are using it as properly.To get the effectiveneness the patient has to take the medicine only when necessary with a prescribed order.

Teach the patient that antibiotics will work over the bacterial cell walls and not to the human cells,why because the human cells do not have cell walls.Different group of antibiotics have different ways in killing bacteria.

Coming to the group of betalactam antibiotics it is a group of antibiotics that kill the bacteria by attacking the cell wall surrounded by a cell of bacteria.WIth out the cell wall bacteria cannot survive it should be made by linking molecules together.The group of Beta-lactams blocks the process of building cell walls,examples of Beta-Lactams are Pencillins and cephalosporins

Coming to the group quinolones,for a bacterium that having an intact DNA,without the intact DNA,bacteria cannot survive and can't reproduce.The quinolones cause the DNA strands to break and further it then prevents in the repairing of breaked DNA strands.The drugs which are coming in this group are levofloxacin and ciprofloxacin

Coming to the group macrolides,The bacterial cells having some protein-building machines called as ribosomes.These ribosomes build prteins to the bacterial cells.For proper function and maintainaing the structure of bacterial cells that needs proteins.With out proteins the bacterial cells could not survive.The macrolides blocks the bacterial ribosomes and prevent them making proteins.That results in killing of bactera.The examples include azithromycin,erythromycin clarithromycin etc.

By getting adequate education regarding the drug action the patient will take medication only with specific orders only.Thus we can prevent the patient from developing of drug resistance.Educate the patient regarding the importance of completing a course of antibiotic then only they can get the effectiveness of medication and prevent recurrence.

In the past decades cranberry juice has been widely used as an effective natural remedies for Urinary tract infections.Although recent researches has shown that cranberry juice is often used in combination with low dose antibiotics shows effectiveness in treating infection the researches shows that there is no interference with drug absortion and interference like other juices such as grapefruit,orange and apple juices.The evidences showing that concurrent use of cranberry juice with an limited has no significant interference in drug absorption and elimination.if in usual quantities as prophylaxxis for UTI is not likely to result in alteration of pharmacokinetics of drugs such as amoxicilline and cefaclor.

But we dont have any srong evidence regarding the importance of taking cranberry juice with antibiotics.