Antibiotic resistance, NICE proposes prescription surveillance

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has brought some stir in the British healthcare system by proposing some measures to tackle resistance to antibiotics. It also published a guideline to promote and monitor antibiotics use by health professionals in order to preserve their effectiveness. Among the proposed measures, there is the set up of antimicrobial surveillance groups that should keep an eye on local prescriptions and cooperate with doctors to understand the reasons for too many antibiotic prescriptions. Moreover, these groups should also support doctors in their interactions with patients, in particular in discussing benefits and harms of early antibiotic prescribing. There are in fact worrying data on doctors’ prescribing habits and patients’ demands. Nine out of ten general practitioners are pressured to prescribe them while more than 95% of patients asking for antibiotics succed to obtain them. Finally, in their guidelines NICE suggests transparent health policies allowing doctors to question their colleagues’ prescribing practices in case of unnecessary prescriptions of antimicrobial agents. The NICE proposal follows the publication of new data by the NHS, showing a steady increase in antibiotic prescription in several years, with consequent high costs for the British healthcare.