Unnecessary prescription of antibiotics may happen because of physicians’ suspicion of bacterial infection as the etiology while treating patients. Sometimes the etiology is different, such as viral infections and the antibiotic course becomes redundant. Moreover, an antibiotic overuse is one of the leading cause of dissemination of resistant strains over a large geographical area. Major limitations of current diagnostic methods: Extended time to results Existing diagnostic methods takes hours to days for diagnosis, when physicians need to prescribe medications within minutes.
Failure to diagnose when the infection site is inaccessible Current methods usually require direct sampling of the pathogen. Such sampling is often not feasible if the infection site is inaccessible (E.g.: bronchitis, middle-ear infection, sinusitis etc.). False positive results Normal flora in the body often…
