Antibiotics: How Much Is Too Much?

(Ivanhoe Newswire) – It’s very easy to go to the doctor and get a prescription of antibiotics when you’re sick. But should you be taking them so often? A new study of Medicare data from 2007 to 2009 suggests that there was a wide discrepancy in antibiotic prescribing for older patients based on geography and the season in which the prescriptions for the medication were written. 

The overuse of antibiotics is common and can lead to unnecessary spending on prescription medicine, as well as increase the risk for adverse effects and antimicrobial resistance.

 

Yuting Zhang, Ph.D., of the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues used Medicare data (comprising about 1 million patients per year) to examine geographic variation in antibiotic use among older adults in 306 hospital referral regions, 50 states and the District of Columbia, and four national regions (South, West, Midwest and Northeast). They also studied quarterly change in antibiotic use across the four regions.

 

The South was the highest antibiotic use at 21.4 percent of patients per quarter, whereas 17.4 percent of patients per quarter used an antibiotic in the West, which was the lowest. The rate in the Midwest was 19.2 percent. The study also showed that, regardless of region, the rate of antibiotic use was highest in the first quarter of the year (20.9 percent, January through March) and lowest during the third quarter (16.9 percent, July through September).

 

"Overall, areas with high rates of antibiotic use may benefit from more targeted programs to reduce unnecessary antibiotic use. Although antibiotic use in the regions with lower use does not necessarily represent the clinically appropriate use given that overuse of antibiotics is common, quality improvement programs set attainable targets using the low-prescribing areas (i.e. the states in the West) as a reference," the authors were quoted as saying.

"Although older adults may have higher risk for adverse outcomes from infection, they may also be at particularly high risk for adverse outcomes from antibiotic use. Therefore, it might be necessary to target some quality improvement initiatives toward this age group."

 

Source: Archives of Internal Medicine, September 2012

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