for you, to what extent did Antibiotics transform medecine ?

Question: for you, to what extent did Antibiotics transform medecine ?
- Keywords:
  medicine
Asked by j.amrani to Ceri, Marikka, Matt, Rob, Sally on 10 Nov 2014. This question was also asked by julien.
- Ceri Dare answered on 10 Nov 2014:
  
  Antibiotics are hugely important to modern medicine. Before antibiotics, even a tiny scratch could get infected and kill you. Without antibiotics, we would have no surgery, no treatments for cancer, many women would die in childbirth, no transplants, no cancer treatment.
  
  There’s a good but quite long article about what would happen without antibiotics here:
  https://medium.com/@fernnews/imagining-the-post-antibiotics-future-892b57499e77
- Robert Hampson answered on 10 Nov 2014:
  
  Antibiotics revolutionised medicine. Before antibiotics, to perform an amputation a barber surgeon would saw the patient’s limb off, pour alcohol on the end and burn it to prevent infection. Now with antibiotics and anaesthetics, they can put the patient to sleep, then carefully and precisely remove the damaged area with scalpels etc. and give antibiotics before and after the operation to prevent infection.
  
  In World War 1 (before antibiotics), many soldiers died from trench foot and there were major problems with boils and minor infections, just being shot in the hand could kill you because of the possibility of infection. After the arrival and large scale production of antibiotics, these problems basically disappeared. Towards the end of World War 2 when antibiotics were starting to be more widely available although many soldiers would still suffer from these ailments, they were easily treated at the front line.
- Sally Cutler answered on 10 Nov 2014:
  
  I guess in general terms you used to go to hospital to die and now you go there to get better. This is what antibiotics have done to transform medicine. We are now seeing resistance, so this wonderful transformation may now be limited.
- Matt Bilton answered on 11 Nov 2014:
  
  Massively. To give just one example – over human history tuberculosis has killed more people than any other infectious agent. Currently, the majority of TB cases are curable with a 6 month course of antibiotics.
- Marikka Beecroft answered on 11 Nov 2014:
  
  They played a huge role and changed modern medicine as we know it. before antibiotics were introduced you could die or pneumonia, tuberculosis and maybe after an operation even gangrene. Now you can take antibiotics to help your immune system out and survive from bacterial infections.

Question: for you, to what extent did Antibiotics transform medecine ?

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