The use of antibiotics in general practice

The prescribing of antibiotics in extra-hospital practice has now reached a level of one sixth of all Australian Pharmaceutical Benefit scheme prescriptions. In the last documented year prescriptions for the penicillins alone amounted to almost eight millions. Is this wholesale prescribing of potent, expensive, and, at times, dangerous chemotherapy really justified. This article will examine the indications for overall use of antibiotics, the pitfalls of their careless prescribing, and briefly review the main indications for each group of drugs in regular use in family practice. The discussion will therefore not include some drugs which are ordinarily limited to hospital practice, nor many of the regimes used in serious or life threatening disease such as meningitis or septicaemia.