Every person in his life is faced with various ailments. It is quite natural that many diseases require medical treatment. It is not rare in our time, when antibacterial therapy is required for lactation. For example, if a woman has complications after childbirth, gestational pyelonephritis, toxoplasmosis, urogenital diseases or infectious-inflammatory, etc.
If the acute disease is mild, then you can try to cope with the disease and without drugs. However, in those cases when the health or life of the mother is in danger, there is no way to avoid antibiotic therapy. For example, if the patient has purulent mastitis or macroprolactinoma. But in most cases, with medical treatment, doctors are strongly advised to keep the lactating mother lactating.
How to evaluate the safety of antibacterial therapy in lactation
First of all, it is necessary to contact a specialist who will be able to choose the most optimal drug and determine the possibility of using it during lactation. In infancy, a child grows rapidly and gains weight. The baby has a high water content in the body, increased metabolism, lack of antibodies. Therefore, a doctor who prescribes the medicine of a nursing mother must certainly ensure the safety of this medication for a baby who is breastfeeding.
When antibiotic therapy during lactation, it is necessary to take into account the ways of getting the medicine into the mother's body, as well as its distribution, metabolism, excretion. The pharmacokinetics of the prescribed drug must also be taken into account in the child's organism (distribution in the child's body, metabolism, excretion pathways, etc.).
To assess the risk of antibiotic therapy for a child, the two most commonly used indicators are the ratio of the concentration of the drug in the plasma of the baby to the mother's milk, the relative infantile dose (the dose that the baby will receive during the day with lactation).
Safety for fetus antibacterial therapy in women during pregnancy depends largely on the degree of permeability of the drug through the placenta, which limits the damaging effect on the organs and tissues of the fetus. Thus, levomycetin (chloramphenicol) depresses bone marrow function and can promote the development of a "gray syndrome" in newborns, tetracyclines contribute to the disruption of bone formation, biseptol and its analogues increase the risk of congenital anomalies in the fetus, fluoroquinolones damage interarticular cartilage in the fetus during growth and newborn.
How to minimize the risk of antibacterial therapy for lactation
To minimize the risk of antibacterial therapy in lactation, there are a number of ways. In some cases, it is possible to transfer the medication for a while or even abandon it altogether. If this is not possible, then the doctor should choose the medications with minimal ingestion into the mother's milk. The optimal solution for certain diseases may be the replacement of the method or form of administration of the drug. For example, instead of tablets, inhalation can be administered, etc.
During lactation, the time between feedings must be taken into account. If the treatment scheme allows, then the drug is better taken before the longest period of sleep in the child (in the evening). If antibacterial therapy is too risky for the child, then it is best to resort to a temporary pause, or even refuse to feed the baby with mother's milk.
Things to remember
Antibiotic therapy during lactation requires extreme caution in the period of newborns, if the baby is premature or sick, do not apply high dosages and prolonged treatment.
But many of the doctors of narrow specialties and general practice are not very aware of the dangers of using certain medicines for the fetus (when the woman is pregnant) and the baby who is breastfed. And pharmacists often do not take into account all of the above when selling drugs. The consequences of such actions are very negative. Therefore, before taking the medicine, carefully read the instructions for its use. And it is better not to be ill and all to you of sound health!