Patients forced to take blood test before they get antibiotics
‘Important to slow resistance’
PATIENTS who go to their GP with a cough will undergo a blood test before being offered antibiotics, under an NHS trial.
Those who aren’t found to have a serious infection will not be prescribed the drugs. The pilot is being tested in a health trust in Greater Manchester as part of a nationwide crackdown on antibiotics.
Health bosses are becoming increasingly concerned over ‘antibiotic resistance’ – where antibiotics become increasingly ineffective at treating bacteria.
Last month the chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies warned of a ‘post-antibiotic apocalypse’ where minor operations would become high risk.
The scheme is being trialled in Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale Clinical Commissioning Group which serves 235,000 patients. GPs have been provided with a blood testing machine and patients coming in with a respiratory infection – a cough – will be given a pin prick test.
This will measure levels of Creactive protein, or CRP, which are high if patients have an infection. If these levels are low patients are likely to have a virus which cannot be treated by antibiotics.
It is understood patients who refuse to be tested could be denied antibiotics.
The scheme, uncovered by Pulse magazine, will have a budget of £50,000 with all 28 surgeries within the health trust expected to take part. Dr Keith Pearson, head of medicines optimisation at NHS Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale CCG, said the testing will help ensure that antibiotics ‘ are prescribed for those patients who really need them’. He added: ‘It’s esti- mated that 5,000 deaths are caused every year in England because antibiotics no longer work for some infections – 13 people every day. That’s why it’s so important for us to slow antibiotic resistance.’
But Dr Andrew Green, of the British Medical Association’s General Practitioners Committee warned that it might have the opposite effect – and inadvertently increase prescribing. He said the test might ‘act as a magnet’ and attract patients to surgeries hoping to get antibiotics, whereas previously they would have stayed at home.
Public Health England will be monitoring the scheme closely and help any other health trusts who wanted to roll it out.
Dr Susan Hopkins, lead healthcare epidemiologist for the antimicrobial resistance programme at PHE said: ‘This approach is one recommended by Nice in their guidance for patients presenting in primary care with symptoms of respiratory tract infection.
‘PHE monitors antibiotic use for every clinical commissioning group and are happy to work with any CCG who are using finger-prick testing to assess levels of C- reactive protein as a way of avoiding the need for an antibiotic prescription.’
Speaking last month, Dame Sally Davies warned that one in four antibiotic prescriptions were unnecessary.
She said: ‘GPs do a good job but if a patient is demanding an antibiotic... it’s difficult for doctors to refuse. Yet antibiotics do not work for flu, they do not work for viruses, coughs, colds, so probably one in three or one in four antibiotic prescriptions are not needed.’
MPs sitting on the Commons science and technology committee have also accused family doctors of needlessly doling out antibiotics to ‘placate’ patients.