Bill Harvey: Future shock

This week, Optician contains one of the scariest facts it has ever published.

Our review of bacterial keratitis includes the following – ‘Globally, resistance to fluoroquinolones is becoming more significant and, in the near future, infections may become untreatable with current antibiotics.’ I am not sure that the implications of bacterial resistance to treatment have been fully assimilated yet.

From the viewpoint of eyecare, the inability to control bacterial infection means near certain blindness for anyone unfortunate enough to suffer a keratitis, either where bacteria are the primary pathogen or a secondary opportunistic infection. For the increasing numbers of independent prescribing practitioners, awareness of careful and selective use of existing antibiotics is a priority. No longer can a scattergun approach to infection management be justified.