Patients taking antibiotics for too long, warns report
PATIENTS end up taking antibiotics for too long for a range of common infections including coughs and earache, experts say.
A review of antibiotic prescribing showed that family doctors often issue antibiotics for too long a duration compared to guidelines set down by Public Health England (PHE).
Experts behind the study, writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), said cutting the duration of antibiotic use would help the fight against antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
Overuse of antibiotics has been blamed for AMR, which occurs when bugs become resistant to drugs and become increasingly difficult to treat.
The Royal College of GPS said antibiotics could be a “matter of life or death” for some patients, adding that rapid tests were needed in surgeries to work out whether an infection is viral, which will not respond to antibiotics, or bacterial, which will respond to antibiotics.
The College also said GPS were already reducing the use of antibiotics but would always focus on the patients in front of them.
The new study was carried out by researchers from PHE, the University of Oxford, and Brighton and Sussex Medical School.
They compared PHE guidelines on use with antibiotic duration for 13 infections in primary care from 2013 to 2015. The conditions included acute sinusitis, acute sore throat, acute cough and bronchitis, pneumonia and acute cystitis.
The most common reasons for antibiotics being prescribed were acute cough and bronchitis (386,972, 41.6% of the included consultations), acute sore throat (239,231, 25.7%), acute middle ear infection (83054, 8.9%), and acute sinusitis (76,683, 8.2%).
More than half of the antibiotic prescriptions for cystitis in women were also for longer than the recommended three days.
The authors concluded: “For the 931,015 included consultations resulting in antibiotic prescriptions, about 1.3 million days were beyond the durations recommended by guidelines.
“For most common infections treated in primary care, a substantial proportion of antibiotic prescriptions have durations exceeding those recommended in guidelines.
“Substantial reductions in antibiotic exposure can be accomplished by aligning antibiotic prescription durations with guidelines.”
Professor Helen Stokes-lampard, chairwoman of the Royal College of GPS, said: “GPS are in an incredibly difficult position when it comes to antibiotics prescribing. We are under huge pressure not to prescribe – and publicly vilified when we are deemed to do so too readily – yet, we know in some cases antibiotics are a matter of life or death. Getting the balance right is extremely challenging.”