The addition of an antibiotic to the process of surgically draining abscesses is associated with improved patient outcomes, including mitigating the spread of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, according to new findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
"We found that adding in a specific antibiotic to the medical treatment also resulted in fewer recurring infections, fewer infections in other places on the body and fewer people passing on the infection to other members of the household," David Talan, MD, lead study author and professor in the department of emergency medicine and department of medicine, division of infectious diseases at the University of California Los Angeles. "This translates into fewer medical visits and reduced healthcare costs."
The researchers examined more than 1,200 patients who underwent treatments for abscesses across five emergency departments and found that 93 percent of those given an inexpensive, generic antibiotic for seven days post-surgery didn't experience infection, compared to 86 percent of those in the placebo group.
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