Prescription of antibiotics and anxiolytics/hypnotics to asthmatic patients in general practice: a cross-sectional study based on French and Italian prescribing data

BMC Family Practice

Research Article

Chris van Weel¹  Laurent Letrilliart²  David Darmon³  Ferdinando Petrazzuoli⁴  Laurent Laforest⁵  Eric Van Ganse⁵ 

[1] Department of Primary and Community Care, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands;Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia;Département de médecine générale, Faculté de médecine, Université Claude-Bernard Lyon I, Lyon, France;Département d’enseignement et de recherche en médecine générale, Faculté de médecine, Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, 28 avenue Valombrose, 06 107, Cedex 02, Nice, France;SNAMID Caserta (Italian Society of General Practice), Caserta, Italy;Department of Clinical Sciences in Malmö, Centre for Primary Health Care Research, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden;Unité de Pharmaco épidémiologie, Faculté d’Odontologie, UMR 5558 CNRS – Université Claude-Bernard Lyon, CHU, Lyon, France;

关键词: Asthma;    Antibiotics;    Anxiolytics;    Hypnotics;    Drug prescription;    Primary care;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12875-015-0222-0

 received in 2014-09-26, accepted in 2015-01-09,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundAsthma is often poorly controlled and guidelines are often inadequately followed in medical practice. In particular, the prescription of non-asthma-specific drugs can affect the quality of care. The goal of this study was to measure the frequency of the prescription of antibiotics and anxiolytics/hypnotics to asthmatic patients and to look for associations between sex or age and the prescription of these drugs.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted using computerised medical records from French and Italian general practitioners’ networks. Patients were selected according to criteria adapted from the HEDIS (Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set) criteria. The outcome measure was the number of antibiotics or anxiolytics/hypnotics prescriptions per patient in 1 year. Parallel multivariate models were developed.ResultsThe final sample included 3,093 French patients (mean age 27.6 years, 49.7% women) and 3,872 Italian patients (mean age 29.1 years, 48.7% women). In the univariate analysis, the French patients were prescribed fewer antibiotics than the Italian patients (37.1% vs. 42.2%, p < 0.00001) but more anxiolytics/hypnotics (17.8% vs. 6.9%, p < 0.0001). In the multivariate models, the female patients were more likely to receive antibiotics (odds ratio: 1.5 [1.3–1.7]) and anxiolytics/hypnotics (odds ratio: 1.8 [1.5–2.1]).ConclusionsThe prescription of antibiotics and anxiolytics/hypnotics to asthmatic patients is frequent, especially in women. Asthma guidelines should address this issue by referring to other guidelines covering the prescription of non-asthma-specific drugs, and alternative non-pharmacological interventions should be considered.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Darmon et al.; licensee BioMed Central. 2015