What we have learned about mastitis therapy in lactation over the last few years
History of overtreatment - In a large German study from 2019 - conducted before resistance testing became mandatory before the use of critical antibiotic agents in veterinary medicine in Germany - mastitis therapy in Germany was described based on the responses of 499 surveyed farmers/milkers/herd managers. It became clear that despite an established system of herd health work for dairy farms by veterinarians and extensive cytomicrobiological diagnostics including resistance testing (more than 1.5 million cytobacteriological examinations per year), clinical mastitis was usually treated for much longer than the application instructions for the drugs (SPC) required. During this time, mastitis was also treated with critical antibiotic agents (fluoroquinolones or 3rd and 4th generation cephalosporins) in 80 % of the cases (Falkenberg et al., 2019).
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