Excerpt from: National Post (click for full article)
Many seniors living in long-term care facilities could and probably should be put on shorter courses of antibiotics when they have bacterial infections, a new study suggests.
It found that nearly half of antibiotic prescriptions written for Ontario seniors in long-term care in 2010 were for treatment courses longer than seven days, which in most cases would be unnecessarily lengthy.
The prescribing habits of doctors rather than the needs of the patients appeared to be what was behind the longer-than-needed use of the drugs, the study also found.
“We’re all creatures of habit in life, and more likely to do something the same way as we did previously,” said Dr. Nick Daneman, first author of the paper, published Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
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