At the start of the 21st century, there was a lot of attention paid to antibiotic overuse and the increasing prevalence of antibiotic resistance attributed to such overuse. While this attention resulted in a decline in the use of antibiotics in the first decade of the century, stewardship seemed to plateau around 2010, suggesting that antibiotic usage could not be further reduced. Finkelstein et al. (10.1542/peds.2018-1259) decided to look at three large health plans regarding their antibiotic utilization data from 2000 to 2014 to see how prescribing has changed. The good news that the authors report on is that further decline has occurred since 2010. Where the decline appears to occur is for those disorders where antibiotics are not indicated (e.g. viral upper respiratory infections).
Have you found yourself more aware of when you do and do not opt to use antibiotics? Has there been some study or review article, or perhaps a talk at a national or local medical meeting or conference that raised that awareness? Are you consciously trying to reduce antibiotic usage in your practice through a quality improvement process, and if so, is it working? We are interested in hearing what you are doing to be a good steward of antibiotics so share your thoughts and ideas by responding to this blog, posting a comment with the study on our website, or sharing your insight via our Facebook or Twitter sites. And if you haven’t thought about further reducing your own pattern of antibiotic usage when not clearly indicated, this study will inspire you to do so even more.
