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Antibiotic Prescribing Patterns in Paediatric Primary Care in Italy: Findings from 2012–2018

Barbieri, E; di Chiara, C; Costenaro, P; Cantarutti, A; Giaquinto, C; Hsia, Y; Doná, D (2021) Antibiotic Prescribing Patterns in Paediatric Primary Care in Italy: Findings from 2012–2018. Antibiotics, 11 (1). p. 18. ISSN 2079-6382 https://doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics11010018
SGUL Authors: Hsia, Yingfen Dona, Daniele

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Abstract

Comprehensive data are needed to monitor antibiotic prescribing and inform stewardship. We aimed to evaluate the current antibiotic prescribing patterns, including treatment switching and prolongation, in the paediatric primary care setting in Italy. This database study assessed antibiotic prescriptions retrieved from Pedianet, a paediatric primary care database, from 1 January 2012 to 31 December 2018. Descriptive analyses were stratified by diagnosis class, calendar year, and children’s age. Generalized linear Poisson regression was used to assess variation in the prescriptions. In total, 505,927 antibiotic prescriptions were included. From 2012 to 2018, the number of antibiotics per child decreased significantly by 4% yearly from 0.79 in 2012 to 0.62 in 2018. Amoxicillin prescriptions decreased with increasing children’s age, while macrolides and third-generation cephalosporins had the opposite trend. Prescriptions were associated with a diagnosis of upper respiratory infection in 23% of cases, followed by pharyngitis (21%), bronchitis and bronchiolitis (12%), and acute otitis media (12%). Eight percent of treatment episodes were prolonged or switched class, mostly represented by co-amoxiclav, macrolides, and third-generation cephalosporins. Our findings report an overall decrease in antibiotic prescriptions, but pre-schoolers are still receiving more than one antibiotic yearly, and broad-spectrum antibiotics prescription rates remain the highest.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
SGUL Research Institute / Research Centre: Academic Structure > Infection and Immunity Research Institute (INII)
Journal or Publication Title: Antibiotics
ISSN: 2079-6382
Language: en
Dates:
DateEvent
24 December 2021Published
21 December 2021Accepted
Publisher License: Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0
URI: https://openaccess.sgul.ac.uk/id/eprint/113979
Publisher's version: https://doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics11010018

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