11/10/2022
Parents, ask questions!
https://www.facebook.com/100065098144958/posts/484263353753599/
Inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics for infections in children is common worldwide, despite several guidelines warning against this practice.
For example, approximately 29% of outpatient antibiotics prescribed to children in the United States are inappropriate. These include a large proportion of children inappropriately prescribed any antibiotic agent for a viral infection (21% of viral upper respiratory infection diagnoses) or inappropriately prescribed a non-first-line antibiotic agent for a bacterial infection (33% of treated otitis media diagnoses, 40% of treated pharyngitis diagnoses and 48% of treated sinusitis diagnoses). Despite this alarming trend of non-guideline-consistent antibiotic use, the consequences are not well described. To address this knowledge gap, an eminent group of US paediatricians and public health scientists decided to investigate, using data from the IBM MarketScan Commercial Database. Their study included children aged 6 months to 17 years diagnosed with a bacterial infection (suppurative otitis media [OM], pharyngitis, sinusitis) or viral infection (influenza, viral upper respiratory infection [URI], bronchiolitis, bronchitis, nonsuppurative OM) as an outpatient from April 1, 2016, to September 30, 2018. The cohort ended up including 2,804,245 eligible children.
Overall, 31% to 36% received inappropriate antibiotics for bacterial infections and 4% to 70% for viral infections. Inappropriate antibiotics were associated with increased risk of several adverse drug events, including about 6 times the risk of Clostridioides difficile infection and 4 times the risk of a severe allergic reaction among children treated with a non-recommended antibiotic agent for a bacterial infection. Antibiotics inappropriately prescribed to non-hospitalised children resulted in at least $74 million in excess health-care costs.
“Inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics is unfortunately very common and leads to adverse drug events and millions of dollars in avoidable health-care costs. Sometimes parents think that the worst that could happen is that the antibiotic just won't help their child. But antibiotics are not harmless – they can cause adverse drug events. Clinicians need to ensure that antibiotics are only used in the way that is most likely to benefit the patient."
Anne Mobley Butler, PhD, lead author, assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Washington University
For more information see https://www.news-medical.net/news/20220526/Inappropriate-antibiotic-prescriptions-for-children-associated-with-excess-health-care-costs.aspx and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35616940/