Final thoughts on antibiotic use: wake up call for the oral health care professionals

ABSTRACTAntibiotic treatment is a form of pharmacotherapy with the specialty of rendering both etiological and curative action. Dentists traditionally administer antibiotics, to restrain contagions and to handle the prevailing dental ailments. Penicillins have been the drug of choice to be opted by the dental practitioners in their routine dental practice. Prudent application of antibiotics in concoction with surgical therapy is the most pertinent mode to cure odontogenic contagions. Considerable prescriptions of antibiotics are ascribed especially in cases which induce bleeding in the oral cavity. Regardless of the obvious indications, perplexity prevails between the oral health care professional's pertaining to the administration of antibiotics in coalition with dental maneuvers. Dreadful ailments have been cured after the incipience of antibiotics in 1929. Besides it also leads to cumbersome consequences by virtue of its misuse. Irrational usage of antibiotic therapy leads to false positive effects on both health and financial grounds and poses a threat to the microbial resistance. The present communication aims to delineate the absolute indications, consequences of abuse and imperative factors to be considered while prescribing antibiotics in routine dental practice.