LISBON, Portugal ― Two thirds of antibiotic prescriptions written for Black patients and more than half of antibiotic prescriptions for Hispanic/LatinX patients are inappropriate, according to data from a study of antibiotic prescribing habits in US doctors' offices, hospital clinics, and emergency departments.
Eric Young, PharmD, PhD, from the University of Texas, Austin, and UT Health, San Antonio, Texas, presented his work as a poster at this week's 32nd European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) 2022.
"We were really surprised mainly by the racial findings, because Black patients have the highest overall and the highest inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics," he told Medscape Medical News. "There was also a difference seen for age [across all ethnicities]."
Pediatric patients were found to have high overall prescribing but, notably, the lowest inappropriate prescribing among all the patient groups, reported Young. "This is interesting because oftentimes we think the more antibiotics are prescribed, then surely the greater the inappropriate prescribing would be too, but pediatricians actually have one of the lowest rates of inappropriate antibiotic prescribing. They do a great job."
The study included more than 7 billion patient visits, 11.3% of which involved an antibiotic prescription.
The rate of antibiotic prescribing was 122 per 1000 visits in Black patients and 139 per 1000 visits in Hispanic patients, while in White patients, the rate was 109 per 1000 visits.
