Cardiologists have been urged to consider antimicrobial resistance as a very real and urgent threat to patient care.
In a letter to the CSANZ, Dr Tom Gottlieb, President of the Australasian Society for Infectious diseases (ASID), stressed the urgency of a partnership between medical “silos” in the face of antibiotic resistance.
“We anticipate that shortly we will be left with almost no useful drugs against multi-resistant bacteria,” he said.
Dr Gottlieb warned cardiologists of the implications of a future without antibiotics.
“Transplant surgery will become virtually impossible … cardiovascular surgery … will have substantial risk of failure,” he said.
“We need trainees to recognise antimicrobial use and antimicrobial resistance not as someone else’s problem but a real threat to their own future practice of medicine,” he said.
“We need them to actively pursue responsible prescribing and identify current gaps in education and practice guidelines.”
ASID proposed, as a minimum, the implementation of mandatory antimicrobial resistance and antimicrobial stewardship in cardiology training as well as stimulating discussion of antibiotic resistance management at annual scientific meetings.