[Antibiotic prescription quality at a hospital emergency service]

Many patients receive an antibiotic prescription at hospital emergency departments. It could be considered adequate if it is effective against an appropriate bacteria spectrum and the dosage prescribed is correct. The aim was to evaluate the antibiotic prescriptions quality at an hospital emergency department.

Retrospective study of patients attended because an infectious disease at an emergency department during a 12 days period analyzing the antibiotic prescription quality.

One hundred eighty nine patients were included (48+/-23 years; 52% women). More frequent diseases attended were respiratory infections (58 patients 31%), urinary tract infections (33 patients, 17%) and gastroenteritis (22 patients, 12%). Most frequent prescribed antibiotic was amoxicillin with clavulanic acid (54%). In 82 cases (43%) prescription was considered incorrect. More frequent reason were having a disease that does not need antibiotics (40%), excessive dosage(27%), treatment period inappropriate prolonged (26%), short dosage(10%) and wrong antibiotic selection (5%).

A huge proportion of patients attended at an hospital emergency department received an inadequate antibiotic treatment. Some important measures should be undertaken in order to improve the antibiotic prescription quality.