[bitL]

A friend of mine had her young brother suddenly developing a narrow line on the skin, growing quickly; 24 hours later both his arms and legs were amputated to keep him alive.

I am wondering if having allowed emergency wide-spectrum antibiotics freely for such cases would help? Time seems to be extremely critical in such cases.

[dragonwriter]

> I am wondering if having allowed emergency wide-spectrum antibiotics freely for such cases would help?

The problem is you also need emergency physicians available equally freely and ubiquitously to identify the need. Unnecessary use of powerful, broad spectrum antibiotics has significant potential adverse personal and public health consequences, and the general public is not qualified to appropriately assess need for use.

[IAmGraydon]

That's called Lymphangitis and it's a sign that there is an extreme underlying infection, usually by the same bacteria that this article is about.

[saiya-jin]

I would consider it a mandatory equipment of the household. Primarily I take them on trips to remote 3rd world countries where you can't rely on quick quality health care, even though most of the time I come back home with them untouched. For me its usually Sumamed, plus whatever specific for destination (malaria pills, stomach/throat, eyes etc.). Just beware of the expiration - they may lose potency and better renew them.

I am not sure I would use them at home in case you describe though - I would just run to emergency if possible. Also antibiotics don't work with viruses, fungus or parasites, so its not a panacea.

[flr03]

You really don't want people to have ready to use antibiotics at home. It's already very difficult to contain bacteria resistance to antibiotics.

Very soon people would not only die from rare bacteria related decease but any kind of random bacteria infection.

[bitL]

Your points are valid, people are irresponsible with antibiotics, however consider that e.g. 1 hour drive to emergency would cost you an arm, literally, whereas quickly eating 5 pills of wide-spectrum antibiotics would keep the infection at bay and give you time to drive to ER without any adversarial effects on your future life. What would be your choice?

[majewsky]

The dichotomy is wrong. If you allow people to have antibiotics at home, enough of them are gonna chew them like vitamins to spread antibiotics resistance even faster. Then when you have your emergency, sure you can eat your pills, but it's not gonna do shit.

The only remotely viable solution is improving access to ERs.

[SkyBelow]

What about an alternative where any usages have to be reported and measured and incorrect usage has an increasing penalty. It starts small and only ramps up with repeated abuse.

If you don't consent to the rules, that is fine, you aren't allowed the drugs at home (same as today).

[spookthesunset]

That is impossible to enforce.

Like the parent said, lots of people will pop those things like candy. In very short order they won’t work at all.

[dragonwriter]

> The only remotely viable solution is improving access to ERs.

Telemedicine plus improving 24-hour pharmacy distribution and equipping them for rapid door-to-door delivery of critical meds (possibly by drone) might work, and might soon be more viable than ERs for the particular use case.

ER access addresses a lot more problems and probably wins aggregate cost/benefit analysis for the foreseeable future.

[PhasmaFelis]

If that was allowed, it might save hundreds in the short term and doom millions in the long term.

Of course I'd do whatever it took to save myself or my loved ones. Anyone would. That's not a good basis for government policy.

(Also, being honest, the number of situations where powerful antibiotics now vs. at the hospital would make a difference and the people involve realize that and administer them has got to be tiny. We can't make policy based on low-probability hypotheticals.)

[dragonwriter]

> If that was allowed, it might save hundreds in the short term and doom millions in the long term.

It might save hundreds and but also kill thousands in the short-term, too: powerful broad spectrum antibiotics aren't without adverse effects, perhaps especially if taken in a genuine emergency that just isn't the kind of emergency the user thinks it is.

[flr03]

My choice would be to take the antibiotics. And that's all the problem. Because maybe I wouldn't need them, because well, you don't lose an arm from infection everyday. And I'd like to say that all the people who would have access to antibiotics would be better than me at knowing when to take or not to take them, but I guess not.

[saiya-jin]

Obviously, this is a long known issue. My stash mostly just expires or gets used while travelling in places like Himalaya or remote tropical jungles where it really makes a difference. My wife is a doctor so that helps.

A single guy having strict antibiotics discipline doesn't mean anything when you have 1 billion+ countries like India where strong generic antibiotics are sold to anybody over the counter (at least that was the case in 2010).

Once I didn't have them on Kilimanjaro and I went from being perfectly OK to almost passing out within 1 freakin' hour from extremely strong gastro infection. Luckily peace corps members of the team had some and they almost immediately helped a lot (I still had what one can call a shitty experience of the peak, albeit successful). In situations like these you don't care about long-term good of the mankind, you just want to survive, far from any professional help.

[yepthatsreality]

What was the cause of the amputation?