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An audit of antimicrobial prescribing by dental practitioners in the north east of England and Cumbria

Sturrock, Andrew, Landes, D, Robson, T, Bird, L, Ojelabi, A and Ling, Jonathan (2018) An audit of antimicrobial prescribing by dental practitioners in the north east of England and Cumbria. BMC Oral Health, 18 (206). ISSN 1472-6831

Item Type: Article

Abstract

Background
Inappropriate prescribing of antimicrobials is a significant threat to global public health. In England, approximately 5% of all antimicrobial items are prescribed by dentists, despite the limited indications for their use in the treatment of oral infections in published clinical guidelines. The objective of this study was to survey antimicrobial prescribing by dental practitioners in North East England and Cumbria, identify educational and training needs and develop a self-assessment tool that can be used for Continued Professional Development by individual practitioners.

Methods
During October 2016, 275 dental practitioners used a standardised form to record anonymous information about patients who had been prescribed antimicrobials. Clinical information and prescribing details were compared against clinical guidelines published by the Faculty of General Dental Practitioners UK.

Results
Dental practitioners provided data on 1893 antimicrobial prescriptions. There was documented evidence of systemic spread, such as pyrexia in 18% of patients. Dentists recorded patients’ pain (91.1% of patients), local lymph gland involvement (41.5%) gross diffuse swelling (55.5%) dysphagia (7.2%) and trismus (13.6%). Reasons for prescribing antimicrobials included patient expectations (25.8%), patient preference (24.8%), time pressures (10.9%), and patients uncooperative with other treatments (10.4%). The most commonly prescribed antimicrobials were amoxicillin, accounting for 61.2% of prescriptions, followed by metronidazole (29.9%). Most prescriptions for amoxicillin were for either 5 days (66.8%) or 7 days (29.6%) and most prescriptions for metronidazole were for a 5-day course (65.2%) or 7-day (18.6%) course.

Conclusion
In most cases, when an antimicrobial was prescribed, practitioners used the correct choice of agents and usually prescribed these at the correct dose. However, some evidence of suboptimal prescribing practices when compared to the Faculty of General Dental Practitioner guidelines were identified. The audit has identified training needs across the region and aided the development of Continued Professional Development sessions. Further work to identify barriers and facilitators for improving antimicrobial prescribing and determining appropriate methods to improve clinical practice are required.

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More Information

Depositing User: Andrew Sturrock

Identifiers

Item ID: 10233
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12903-018-0682-4
ISSN: 1472-6831
URI: http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/10233
Official URL: https://bmcoralhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/1...

Users with ORCIDS

ORCID for Andrew Sturrock: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-3316-1412
ORCID for Jonathan Ling: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-2932-4474

Catalogue record

Date Deposited: 11 Dec 2018 11:36
Last Modified: 20 Jan 2023 10:08

Contributors

Author: Andrew Sturrock ORCID iD
Author: Jonathan Ling ORCID iD
Author: D Landes
Author: T Robson
Author: L Bird
Author: A Ojelabi

University Divisions

Faculty of Health Sciences and Wellbeing
Faculty of Health Sciences and Wellbeing > School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences

Subjects

Sciences > Pharmacy and Pharmacology

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