The aim of this study was to analyse characteristics of paediatric antibiotic use in ambulatory care in Hungary. Data on antibiotics for systemic use dispensed to children (0–19 years) were retrieved from the National Health Insurance Fund. Prescribers were categorised by age and specialty. Antibiotic use was expressed as the number of prescriptions/100 children/year or month. For quality assessment, the broad per narrow (B/N) ratio was calculated as defined by the European Surveillance of Antimicrobial Consumption (ESAC) network. Paediatric antibiotic exposure was 108.28 antibiotic prescriptions/100 children/year and was the highest in the age group 0–4 years. Sex differences had heterogenous patterns across age groups. The majority of prescriptions were issued by primary care paediatricians (PCP). The use of broad-spectrum agents dominated, co-amoxiclav alone being responsible for almost one-third of paediatric antibiotic use. Elderly physicians tended to prescribe less broad-spectrum agents. Seasonal variation was found to be substantial: antibiotic prescribing peaked in January with 16.6 prescriptions/100 children/month, while it was the lowest in July with 4 prescriptions/100 children/month. Regional variation was prominent with an increasing west to east gradient (max: 175.6, min: 63.8 prescriptions/100 children/year). The identified characteristics of paediatric antibiotic use suggest that prescribing practice should be improved.

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The development of the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases has been underway since 2007. The World Health Organisation, its coordinator, currently has scheduled its completion for 2017. The novel classification system has a similar high-level structure than the 10th revision of the International Classification of Diseases, while the entities are significantly more detailed and contain more parameters. The development process aims to harmonize the 11th revision definitions with the codes of other information technology systems, potentially allowing the statistical use of far more clinical information than at present. Meanwhile, this complex development process has confronted several difficulties. The developers are awaiting the comments of all professionals concerning the B-version of the system, available on the Internet.

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