Multiple prescriptions of antibiotics for children aged 0 to 5 years in relation to type of antibiotic.
The risk of receiving more than one prescription within an antibiotic course was examined for all children aged 0 to 5 years in a Danish county during 1997. We identified 29,307 prescriptions of systemic antibiotics for 16,245 children in a prescription database. Ten per cent of the prescriptions were followed by a new prescription within 10 days. In children who received two prescriptions (n = 3993), 19% redeemed the prescriptions within the same course. When the child was prescribed penicillin V, compared with broad-spectrum penicillin, the odds ratio of receiving a repeat prescription within 1-2 days was 2.9 (95% CI 2.5-3.4) and within 3-10 days 1.3 (95% CI 1.2-1.5).
Thrane
N
N
The Danish Epidemiology Science Centre at the Department of Epidemiology and Social Medicine, University of Aarhus, Aarhus C, Denmark. nt@soci.au.dk
Olesen
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C
Schonheyder
H C
HC
Sorensen
H T
HT
D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003718:Denmark; D011307:Drug Prescriptions / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D004363:Drug Utilization / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians'
D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents