Stop Expecting Antibiotics to Be Handed Out Routinely: Here’s Why

For years, my colleagues on the Prepared Patient site have preached the importance of being an advocate for your own care. And they’ve noted that at times it is necessary to push back against doctors’ recommendations if a suggested treatment does not seem right. I just returned from a visit to the U.K., which drove home the importance of that advice. Coming down with a common cold gave me a chance to experience differences in how British and American doctors approach the nasty symptoms of an all-too-common medical problem.
Let’s face it. Most of us have been given too many antibiotics for sore throats, coughs, bronchitis, even the flu caused by viruses for which antibiotics are not helpful. As we know, they may be harmful by causing resistance later in life when a serious illness could become tough to cure or even deadly. Last fall, a study found that although growing antibiotic resistance has been known about for a couple of decades, between 1997 and 2010 primary care and emergency room doctors prescribed antibiotics about 60 percent of the time for sore throats.
The lead researcher, Dr. Jeffrey Linder, a primary care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, advised “the right antibiotic prescribing rate for adults with sore throat is probably around 10 percent.” That’s because only about 10 percent of adults with sore throat actually have strep.
The day after I arrived in London my cold symptoms were quite bothersome, so...

Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - June 16, 2014 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Access Consumer Health Care Policy Source Type: blogs