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from the give-that-rampancy-an-antibiotic! dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Clinicians prescribed antibiotics without an infection-related diagnosis nearly half of the time and one in five prescriptions were provided without an in-person visit, according to research being presented at IDWeek 2018. The study, which is the first to look at overall outpatient antibiotic prescribing, analyzed more than half a million prescriptions from 514 outpatient clinics.
Previous research has found antibiotics often are prescribed for certain symptoms (such as a sore throat or cough) when they shouldn't be.
Most of these types of illnesses are caused by viruses and therefore don't benefit from antibiotics, which only treat bacterial infections.
"We looked at all outpatient antibiotic prescribing and results suggest misuse of these drugs is a huge problem, no matter the symptom," said Jeffrey A. Linder, MD, MPH, lead author of the study and chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago. "We found that nearly half the time, clinicians have either a bad reason for prescribing antibiotics, or don't provide a reason at all. When you consider about 80 percent of antibiotics are prescribed on an outpatient basis, that's a concern."
[...] Of the 20 percent of antibiotics that were prescribed outside of an in-person visit, most were by phone (10 percent). Others were via an electronic health record system that allows prescription writing but there is no opportunity to gather information about symptoms or testing (4 percent), refill (4 percent) and online portal (1 percent). There are some cases where that may be appropriate, such as for women who suffer from recurrent urinary tract infections or teens taking antibiotics for acne. Researchers will analyze which of those prescriptions were appropriate in the next phase of research.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @03:22PM (5 children)
because microbes are quick to propagate.
Wasting time to confirm "an infection-related diagnosis" beyond the surface symptoms, can easily mean fighting a pneumonia where there was only bronchitis. Or an amputation where a limb could be saved. Or altogether providing work to a mortician, as one who could be cured by antibiotics today might be already beyond help tomorrow.
Infections, bad infections, are fast. Medical bureaucracy is slow. Saving lives is more important than saving antibiotics.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday October 06 2018, @03:35PM (4 children)
Infections that the body won't clear up itself given time are also exceedingly rare nowadays. You're likely to end up with not even half a dozen in your adult life unless you live a good bit longer than average.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @05:07PM (1 child)
And how many people are in a job situation where they can afford for an infection to "clear up itself given time"?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday October 06 2018, @08:07PM
How many people do you know that would skip work if they can't afford to even with an infection?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 06 2018, @07:59PM
Got a case of blood poisoning once when I was 22 - pretty sure that needed the antibiotics it got. As for the rest, including the 6 week course of IV continuous drip for osteomyelitis, yeah, pretty sure most of those were overcaution on the part of the medical community.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @08:19PM
Sure you are. Especially as each one is the more likely to be your last, the older you get. ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias [wikipedia.org]