Hello and welcome to the Zero to Finals podcast.

My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about antibiotics.

If you want to follow along with written notes on this topic,

you can follow along at zero definals.com slash antibiotics

or in the Infectious Diseases section of the Zero zero to finals medicine book. Let's get

straight into it. Antibiotics are used to treat bacterial infections and they work in various ways

either to stop the reproduction and growth of the bacteria, in which case we call them

bacteriostatic, or to kill the bacteria directly, in which case we call them bacteriostatic, or to kill the bacteria directly,

in which case we call them bactericidal. Antibiotics need to be used carefully because overuse

or inappropriate use can lead to resistance of bacteria to those antibiotics and increasing

difficulty in treating the infections.

It's important to pay attention to local resistance and guidelines for bacteria.

Bacteria in different populations develop resistance to different antibiotics.

So, for example, the E. coli in one area of the country that's causing urinary tract infections

might be particularly resistant to trimethympathrim, whereas in another area of the country,

they may be resistant to nitrofewan toin, but sensitive to trimethympthorim. Therefore, it's necessary

to have local policies that guide which antibiotics to use

in which circumstances. So a quick Tom tip, in your OSCEs, when somebody asks a question about

treating infections, you can always answer that you would treat with antibiotics according to the

local antibiotic policy. And this is the most appropriate answer to that

question. Needless to say, it's quite useful to have a idea about which antibiotics are appropriate

for which infections. Let's look at how antibiotics work. They work in a number of different ways.

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