JAC Advance Access originally published online on June 10, 2008
Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy 2008 62(3):587-592; doi:10.1093/jac/dkn230
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Original research |
Antibiotics for respiratory, ear and urinary tract disorders and consistency among GPs
1 Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht, Heidelberglaan 100, 3584 CX Utrecht, The Netherlands 2 NIVEL (Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research), Otterstraat 118-124, 3513 CR Utrecht, The Netherlands
* Corresponding author. Tel: +31-88-756-8198; Fax: +31-88-756-8099; E-mail: davidsyong{at}gmail.com
Received 19 February 2008; returned 27 March 2008; revised 15 May 2008; accepted 16 May 2008
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Abstract |
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Objectives: To describe specific diagnoses for which systemic antibiotics are prescribed, to assess adherence of antibiotic choice to national guidelines and to assess consistency among general practitioners (GPs) in prescribed volumes of antibiotics for respiratory, ear and urinary tract disorders.
Methods: The cross-sectional study included 174 GPs from 89 general practices. Data were derived from the Second Dutch National Survey of General Practice (DNSGP-2) in 2001. Outcome measures were the antibiotic prescriptions for respiratory, ear and urinary tract disorders defined according to the International Classification of Primary Care codes, the percentage of first-choice antibiotics complying with national guidelines and the number of antibiotic prescriptions per 1000 patients per GP per year.
Results: The most antibiotics for respiratory tract infection (RTI) were prescribed for acute bronchitis (25%), sinusitis (22%) and acute upper RTI (14%). The most antibiotics were prescribed for acute otitis media (77% of ear disorders) and cystitis (95% of urinary tract disorders). First-choice antibiotics were prescribed in 
75% of the cases, whereas macrolides and amoxicillin/clavulanate (second-choice antibiotics) were prescribed in 25%, especially in lower RTIs. The correlations (Spearman 
) between prescribed volumes for the three main groups of disorders varied from 0.39 to 0.67.
Conclusions: GPs were consistent in prescribing antibiotics for the three groups of diseases. Improvement strategies should focus on the management of acute upper RTIs and acute bronchitis and also on the use of amoxicillin/clavulanate and macrolides, these being mostly second-choice antibiotics in national guidelines.
Keywords: antibiotics , prescription , general practice , The Netherlands , guideline adherence
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Introduction |
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About 85% of outpatient antibiotic prescriptions are prescribed by general practitioners (GPs).1 Although the Netherlands has the lowest outpatient antibiotic prescription rate in Europe,2 there are two aspects that are of concern. First,
50% of antibiotic prescriptions for respiratory tract infections (RTIs) are not in accordance with national guidelines.3,4 This causes unnecessary expenditure and use of health services, encouraging patients to re-consult their GPs for subsequent similar problems, unnecessary side effects and the possible development of antibiotic resistance.1,2,5–7 Secondly, the international trend of a decline in the use of narrow-spectrum and older penicillins and of prescribing more broad-spectrum and new antibiotics has also been shown to exist in low-prescribing countries such as the Netherlands.1,8 This last group of antibiotics should only be used in more severe infections or in the case of intolerance of first-choice antibiotics.
Although still low, there is an increase in the bacterial resistance in the Netherlands.8,9 In Escherichia coli, resistance rates for trimethoprim and amoxicillin have increased from 10% and 20% in 1997 to 22% and 32% in 2003–04, respectively, and resistance to macrolides among clinical isolates of Streptococcus pneumoniae is 8%.
Recently, we have shown that in the Netherlands, 50%, 7% and 25% of all systemic antibiotic prescriptions in general practice are prescribed for respiratory, ear and urinary tract disorders, respectively,10 but until now it is unknown for which specific diagnoses these antibiotics are prescribed. This study was aimed at describing the specific diagnoses for which systemic antibiotics are prescribed, to assess the degree to which Dutch GPs adhere to national guidelines concerning antibiotic choice in the cases of sinusitis, tonsillitis, lower RTIs, acute otitis media and urinary tract infections and to assess consistency in prescribing antibiotics. More insight into these aspects may contribute to strategies and interventions to improve antimicrobial management in general practice.
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Methods |
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GPs, setting and data collection
Morbidity and antibiotic prescription data were collected from the Second Dutch National Survey of General Practice (DNSGP-2).11 This survey included 195 GPs in 104 practices serving 400 912 patients (mid-time population). For this study, 15 out of the 104 practices were excluded because of inadequate registration of contacts and/or prescriptions, and software problems in registration. Our study population therefore consisted of 89 practices, 174 GPs and 356 178 patients (mid-time population). The characteristics of the study group as well as those of the original sample of participating GPs did not differ from those of the total population of Dutch GPs and patients, except for type of practice: single-handed practices were under-represented.11
Data were derived from electronic medical records during a 1 year period. Data on morbidity included the indication in the International Classification of Primary Care version 1 (ICPC-1) format, dates and patient identification. Drugs were coded according to the World Health Organization Anatomical Therapeutical Chemical (ATC) classification.12
Outcome measures were: (i) the antibiotic prescriptions for respiratory, ear and urinary tract disorders according to ICPC codes; (ii) the percentage of first-choice antibiotics according to national guidelines; and (iii) the number of systemic antibiotic (=J01 ATC code) prescriptions per 1000 patients per GP per year for all cases and according to respiratory, ear and urinary tract disorders.
After calculating distributions of the number of antibiotic prescriptions per 1000 patients per GP among ICPC chapters and the most frequently used ICPC codes, adherence to national recommendations concerning antibiotic choice as available from national GP guidelines in 2001 (Table 1) was analysed.13–17 To assess to what degree GPs were consistent in prescribing antibiotics, Spearman correlation coefficients () were calculated between the numbers of antibiotic prescriptions per 1000 patients per year for respiratory, ear and urinary tract disorders. Data were analysed with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 13.0.1 for Windows.
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Results |
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In total, 85 274 systemic antibiotic prescriptions were prescribed to 53 036 patients with a mean age of 43 years, of whom 64% were female. About 15% of the patients received at least one antibiotic prescription during a 1 year period, with an average of 1.6 prescriptions per patient. The rate of patients getting three or more antibiotic prescriptions per year ranged from 9% in children under 5 years to 12% in patients between 5 and 64 years, and to 20% in patients over 64 years.
Antibiotic prescriptions for respiratory, ear and urinary tract disorders
Eighty-six percent (73 246) of the prescriptions were classified with an ICPC code. In 14% (12 028) of the prescriptions, a diagnosis was missing, more frequently for quinolones (22%) compared with other subgroups. Fifty percent of the 73 246 prescriptions were prescribed for respiratory disorders, 7% for ear disorders and 28% for urinary tract disorders. In the group of respiratory tract diseases, most antibiotics were prescribed for acute bronchitis (25%) and sinusitis (22%), followed by acute upper RTI (14%) and acute tonsillitis (9%) (Table 2). Almost all antibiotic prescriptions for urinary tract disorders were prescribed for cystitis (95%), and 77% of the prescriptions for ear disorders were prescribed for acute otitis media.
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Adherence to guidelines
Antibiotic prescriptions for sinusitis and acute tonsillitis corresponded with recommended first-choice antibiotics in 80% and 70% of the prescriptions, respectively (Table 3). About 75% of the prescriptions for acute otitis media and urinary tract infections were first-choice drugs. Prescriptions for acute bronchitis were mostly tetracyclines (41%) and amoxicillin (31%), followed by macrolides (16%) and amoxicillin/clavulanate (9%). Almost half of the prescriptions for pneumonia were amoxicillin (26%) or tetracyclines (20%), and the remaining were amoxicillin/clavulanate (24%) and macrolides (23%).
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GPs' consistency in prescribed antibiotic volumes
For all cases, there was a mean number of 260 (SD 108) antibiotic prescriptions per 1000 patients per GP per year with a median of 244 prescriptions (IQR 195–333). The median numbers of prescriptions for respiratory, ear and urinary tract disorders were 98 (IQR 60–139), 12 (IQR 7–19) and 60 (IQR 41–77), respectively. There was a high correlation between prescribed volumes of antibiotics for respiratory and ear disorders (Spearman : 0.67; P < 0.001), which means that GPs who produced high volumes of prescriptions for respiratory disorders also prescribed high volumes for ear disorders. The correlations between prescribed volumes for respiratory and urinary tract disorders and between prescribed volumes for urinary tract and ear disorders were moderate (Spearman : 0.51; P < 0.001 and : 0.39; P < 0.001, respectively). Multivariate analysis showed that these correlations were not influenced by factors such as differences in age or gender between practices (data not shown).
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Discussion |
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In this survey, acute bronchitis, sinusitis and acute upper RTI were the most common respiratory disorders for which antibiotics were prescribed, whereas cystitis and acute otitis media were the most common urinary tract and ear disorders in this respect. About 20% to 30% of the antibiotic prescriptions were not the recommended first-choice antibiotics, especially macrolides and amoxicillin/clavulanate for respiratory disorders and quinolones for urinary tract disorders. GPs were fairly consistent in their prescribed volumes of antibiotics for respiratory, ear and urinary tract disorders.
Strengths and limitations of the study
The DNSGP-2 provides a good representation of morbidity and prescribing habits in Dutch general practice,11 except for an under-representation of GPs with single-handed practices. Data were assumed to be accurate as extraction took place from electronic medical records of the practices,18 and inter-observer reliability of coding episodes into the ICPC codes was high.19 The number of prescriptions was used as the outcome measure. It was not possible to use defined daily doses, as information on the dosage of antibiotics was not often registered by GPs. However, the measure used here has the advantage that it clearly depicts a GP's decision to prescribe or not.
The results of DNSGP-2 on prescription rates for antibiotics generally correspond with the nationwide reimbursement figures.10 The average number of 1.6 antibiotic prescriptions per patient found in this study was almost the same as the average of 1.7 prescriptions per patient mentioned in the nationwide reimbursement figures.20 However, GPs participating in this survey prescribed fewer antibiotics than the total population of GPs and especially fewer macrolides and quinolones.10 GPs voluntarily participating in the research network of the nationwide GP database DNSGP-2 probably adhere more consistently to guidelines than non-participating GPs, leading to higher prescribing of first-choice antibiotics. We thus may assume that our study underestimated the volume of second-choice antibiotics used in Dutch general practice, especially for quinolones for which diagnoses were missing relatively often.
Comparison with existing literature and interpretation of results
Assuming that antibiotics are usually not indicated for acute upper RTI and acute bronchitis, it is likely that in most of these prescriptions, representing 14% and 25% of all antibiotic prescriptions for respiratory tract disorders, either the diagnosis or the indication for antibiotic treatment was incorrect. Recently, this phenomenon was also described in the UK.21 Comparing the distributions of antibiotics across respiratory tract disorders in both countries, one sees that British GPs prescribe relatively twice as many antibiotic prescriptions for acute upper RTI and acute tonsillitis, whereas Dutch GPs prescribe twice as many antibiotics for sinusitis as their UK colleagues.21 These differences might partly be attributed to differences in diagnostic preferences and coding practices between Dutch and British GPs and partly to real differences in antimicrobial management between the UK and the Netherlands. The proportion of antibiotics for lower RTIs is more or less the same in both countries. The number of antibiotic prescriptions for urinary tract disorders in proportion to all antibiotic prescriptions is almost three times higher in the Netherlands than in the UK. This might be partly explained by the higher volume of antibiotics in the UK, resulting in a larger denominator of all prescriptions,2 although we assume that the volume of antibiotics for urinary tract disorders is somewhat similar in both countries. Future studies should use similar denominators such as the number of prescriptions per 1000 patients to make comprehensive comparisons possible.
About three-quarters of antibiotics are first-choice antibiotics. The use of second-choice antibiotics in terms of volume is not yet a major issue in the Netherlands,22,23 but the increase from 4% in 198724 to 25% second-choice antibiotics in this study is a reason for concern. More restriction is necessary mainly for the use of amoxicillin/clavulanate and macrolides.
Bacterial resistance cannot be a motive for the use of amoxicillin/clavulanate in community-acquired pneumonia (CAP), as S. pneumoniae is the most frequent cause of CAP and resistance of S. pneumoniae to penicillin and other antibiotics in general practice is low.8 Because resistance in Haemophilus influenzae can be relevant in primary care settings and this pathogen is more prominent in some chronically ill patients, the use of amoxicillin/clavulanate might be considered for patients with co-morbidities such as diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Three-quarters of amoxicillin/clavulanate prescriptions for pneumonia in our study were prescribed for patients without diabetes or COPD. In addition, the prevalence of allergy to penicillin, which is estimated to be between 0.7% and 8%, could not explain the use of second-choice antibiotics, such as macrolides, for common infections.25
This study showed that GPs were consistent in the volume of antibiotics that they prescribed across respiratory, ear and urinary tract disorders. Consistency in prescribing antibiotics for children (older than 24 months) with acute otitis media, patients with sore throat, patients with sinusitis, children (up to 6 years) with fever and children (up to 12 years) with asthma has been shown previously.26 This consistency corroborates our finding that GPs' diagnostic labelling, in addition to the number of acute respiratory tract episodes per 1000 patients, is an independent predictor of the prescribed volume of antibiotics.27
Future antimicrobial improvement strategies should focus particularly on the management of acute upper RTIs, acute bronchitis and the prescription of second-choice antibiotics, notably on the use of amoxicillin/clavulanate and macrolides. While doing this, consistency in antibiotic management by GPs should be taken into account.
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Funding |
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The Second Dutch National Survey of General Practice (DNSGP-2) was funded by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport.
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None to declare.
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Acknowledgements |
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We thank all GPs who voluntarily participated in this study and Peter Zuithoff for his statistical assistance.
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References |
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