This volume continues the tradition of the editors' first volume, Antibiotic Policies: Theory and Practice, by assembling contributions from experts around the world concerned with responsible antibiotic resistance and fighting resistance. This volume looks at many of the crucial issues of resistance in a clinical context, with an emphasis on MRSA; surely the greatest challenge to our antibiotic and infection control policies that modern health care systems have ever seen. Other fascinating chapters explore the psychology of prescribing, modern management techniques as an adjunct to antibiotic policies, and the less obvious downsides of antibiotic use. Lastly, several chapters from authors living in Mediterranean countries give a perspective from an area of the world with some of the greatest problems in antibiotic use and resistance.

Consequences of antimicrobial chemotherapy: overgrowth, resistance and virulence.- The process of antibiotic prescribing, can it be changed?- Cultural and Socio-Economic Determinants of Antibiotic Use.- Electronic prescribing.- Prevalence surveys of antimicrobial use in hospitals; purpose, practicalities and pitfalls.- Antibiotic Use in Hospitals in the United States SCOPE-MMIT Antimicrobial Surveillance Network.- New Hospital Initiatives in Fighting Resistance.- Antimicrobial Resistance: Preventable or Inevitable? Problem of the Era from Two Perspectives.- Fighting antimicrobial resistance in the Mediterranean region.- Cystic fibrosis - coping with resistance.- Community-acquired pneumonia - Back to basics.- Hospital Acquired Pneumonia: Diagnostic and Treatment Options.- Optimising Antimicrobial Chemotherapy in the ICU - a review?.- Risk assessment for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).- What Do We Do With Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus In Surgery?- Control of health care-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.