Antimicrobial prescribing, antimicrobial consumption, community, surveillance
Introduction:
The HPSC uses purchased IMS Health sales data for the surveillance of outpatient antibiotic use in Ireland, which has been deemed unsuitable by the
Antibiotic Consumption Surveillance
Working Group recommendations
for SARI in 2003. This study
aims to demonstrate the benefits
of outpatient antimicrobial
consumption surveillance.
Methods:
Repeated, cross- sectional study comparing point-prevalent antimicrobial prescription data using a novel antimicrobial consumption surveillance form within four community pharmacies
in one geographical region of a low prescribing county (16-21 DID) in Ireland.
Results:
Data for 257 antimicrobial prescriptions were recorded in week 12, 2010; and 248 for week 13, 2011. In 2010, local penicillin use was similar to national levels, however was 10% lower in 2011. Narrow-spectrum penicillin use was lower than the national level, favouring
higher levels of broad-spectrum penicillins. Less macrolides and tetracyclines were observed locally with higher usage of sulfonamides/ trimethoprim and ‘other antibiotic’ classes. Local cephalosporin use
was over double the national level
at 16% in 2010 and 15.5% in 2011, compared to 6% and 5.3% respectively. For every narrow-spectrum antibiotic dispensed in the community, 10.3 broad-spectrum antibiotics were prescribed in 2010, which increased to 10.8 in 2011. Public patient antimicrobial usage was high, representing 38.1% of the Irish population, but resulting in 64% of prescriptions in 2010 and 55% in 2011.
Conclusions:
This study demonstrates the benefits of outpatient antimicrobial consumption surveillance. With deviations from national levels locally, areas needing intervention can be detected and local prescribers can be given feed-back on trends observed.