Objective:

to assess whether a pharmaceutical education intervention achieved a reduction and improvement in the prescription of antibiotics for management of paediatric acute pharyngitis (PAP).

Material and methods:

we conducted a pre-post intervention study. We analysed the prescription of systemic antibiotics (J01) associated with diagnoses corresponding to CIAP codes for streptococcal pharyngitis-tonsillitis (R72), acute pharyngitis (R74) and acute tonsillitis (R76) before and after a pharmaceutical education intervention on primary care (PC) paediatricians. We calculated the percentage of antibiotic prescriptions corresponding to first-line antibiotics (penicillin V, penicillin G or amoxicillin) associated with CIAP code R72 and CIAP codes R74-R76. The pharmaceutical education intervention consisted of a training workshop and clinical sessions.

Results:

the prescription of systemic antibiotics decreased significantly in the post-intervention period compared to the pre-intervention period (44.1% versus 46.2%; p = 0.014). There was a significant increase in the percentage of first-line antibiotic prescriptions out of the total prescriptions associated with CIAP code R72 (84.3% versus 57.6%; p = 0.000) and a decrease in the proportion of prescriptions of amoxicillin-clavulanic acid (13.6% versus 22.9%; p <0.001) and azithromycin (1.0% versus 11.3%; p <0.001) over the total prescriptions associated with CIAP code R72.

Conclusions:

there was a decrease in antibiotic prescription by PC paediatricians with improvement in the prescription of first-line agents for PAP.

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