A Comparative Study of Antibiotic Prescription Rates at The Emergency Room to Prevent Infections of Dog or Cat Bites and Wound Infection Rates between the Group Using Hospital’s Antibiotic Prescription Criteria and The Group Using Clinical Judgment of Physicians
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Abstract
Background: In Thailand, over one million people are bitten by animals each year. More than 80% of them are administered antibiotics prophylaxis. The overuse of antibiotics can contribute to antimicrobial resistance.
Objective: This research aimed to examine whether prescribing antibiotics prophylaxis for dog and cat bites using the researcher’s criteria based on the local and international guidelines could lower the incident rate of improperly prescribing antibiotics when compared to prescribing antibiotics with no prescribing criteria under the condition that the wound infection rates on the third day of the two groups bore no difference.
Methodology: This research was conducted as an observational analytic study, collecting data from a sample of 129 patients aged 15 years and over with dog and cat bites treated at the Emergency Room at Somdejphrajoataksin Maharaj Hospital from October 18 to December 18, 2020. The sample was divided into 2 groups with a control group that the doctors could prescribe antibiotics without adhering to any criteria in the first month and an experimental group which was prescribed antibiotics under the criteria in the second month. There were two parts of the data collection form used in this study with the first part used on the first day of treatment and the second part used on the third day to collect the data on wound infections. Data were presented using frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation with the analysis performed using Chi-square test, Fisher’s exact test, and Independent t-test with the statistical significance at 0.05.
Results: It was found that the control group (88.6%) was prescribed more antibiotics than the experimental group (76.3%), p = 0.064. In addition, when focusing only on cases with dog bite wounds, the antibiotic prescription for the control group (95.1%) was more than the experimental group (77.4%), p = 0.033. The infection rate of the control group (2.9%) was greater than that of the experimental group (1.7%), p = 1.000.
Conclusions and recommendations: Based on the research results, the antibiotic prescribing criteria could be applied in the context of emergency room, reducing the overuse of antibiotics from the doctor’s prescription with no statistical significance in the infection rates.
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References
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