Addressing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is now a fundamental step in planning safe surgical care in hospitals, according to an opinion piece published in the British Journal of Surgery.
The article emphasises the importance of ensuring that addressing AMR is effectively integrated into surgical strategic planning and forms part of broader antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) activities. An AMS programme will also help to stimulate the behavioural and organisational change in health care settings that is required to reduce the risk of antimicrobial resistance.
Antimicrobial stewardship is a coordinated programme that promotes the appropriate use of antimicrobials (including antibiotics) in order to reduce AMR in hospitals. Hospital care is delivered by multidisciplinary teams, sometimes made up of several specialists who each have the authority to prescribe antibiotics, and adopting an AMS initiative can ensure there is a clear strategy on the use of antimicrobials for patients.
The collaborative piece was written by Dr Puneet Dhar, Surgical Gastroenterology at Amrita Hospital, India, epidemiologist Dr Gabriel Birgand, and Professor Alison Holmes OBE, who leads the Centres for Antimicrobial Optimisation Network (CAMO-Net), a unique multidisciplinary, global collaboration of researchers and health care professionals working to address AMR on human health.
CAMO-Net is comprised of teams from 11 countries around the world, led by hubs in Brazil, India, South Africa, Uganda, and the UK. Working together, the network will achieve its aims of optimising antimicrobial use through a sustainable global research ecosystem, developed across low, middle, and high resource settings, and across urban and rural environments.
Looking specifically at the risks of developing resistant infections during surgery, the two most prevalent bacterial species found in postoperative infections were also found to be the two most associated with deaths and AMR, highlighting the urgent need for action.
The article notes how important it is to develop guidelines for health care settings when planning surgical care, and this is just one part of CAMO-Net’s efforts to address AMR around the world.
Professor Holmes said: “The ability of antibiotics to reduce infectious morbidity in surgery is rapidly waning. Instead of focusing solely on developing new antibiotics, we must centre our efforts on taking action to change our behaviours now, and incorporate an effective antimicrobial stewardship programme in all health care settings.”
Dr Birgand said: “To ensure safe surgical care, addressing AMR must be integral in any surgical planning or surgical strategy and must be considered a vital component of service resilience. The use of new technologies must include a greater emphasis on implementation, and on behavioural and organizational science to better influence reliability in application and adoption.” You can read the full publication in the British Journal of Surgery. To find out more about the work of CAMO-Net, please visit our website.
