General practitioners' patterns of antimicrobial drugs prescription in the therapy of acute pharyngitis

Prospective study on antibiotics misuse among infants with upper respiratory infections

“…A possible explanation for this finding is that infants in dispensaries are more likely to originate from lower socioeconomic status families, which may increase the parent demand for antibiotics and may contribute to inappropriate prescribing [5,31]. Another reason might be that pediatricians with a larger number of patients in their care and a shorter period of examination time tend to prescribe antibiotics more often than in private clinics [2,20]. Thus, families in dispensaries will not receive adequate support and information regarding antibiotics prescriptions for viral infections.…”

“…Children aged 0 to 4 years with URTI and bronchitis account for 53% of the total antibiotics burden in pediatric populations [28]. Although many studies have investigated antibiotics overuse among infants and children in ambulatory care practices and in hospital settings [12,14,15,20,23,24,28,29,34,37,39], little is known about the antibiotics-prescribing patterns among healthy infants in exclusive pediatric office-based settings. The objective of the present study was to determine the prevalence and infant, maternal, and pediatrician predictor characteristics of antibiotics prescription in viral respiratory illnesses among healthy infants in Beirut, Lebanon, during the first year of life.…”