Antibiotics Use in Primary Care during COVID-19
A special issue of Antibiotics (ISSN 2079-6382). This special issue belongs to the section "Antibiotics Use and Antimicrobial Stewardship".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 April 2022) | Viewed by 19219
Special Issue Editor
Interests: rational use of antibiotics; respiratory tract infections; urinary tract infections; point-of-care tests; primary health care
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing problem threatening societal development and human health. The pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 has had devastating effects on the healthcare system and the whole of society, with subsequent disruption of the normal organization of primary care. Despite the viral nature of this syndrome, studies carried out during the first wave revealed high antibiotic prescribing rates to patients with COVID-19, largely due to suspected bacterial co-infections. However, overprescribing of antibiotics in infected patients could lead to increased selective pressure caused by AMR.
The goal of this Special Issue is to gather insights into antibiotic use in primary care during the pandemic, aiming to understand the patterns and predictors of antibiotic prescribing in COVID-19 patients and to evaluate the association between reducing unnecessary antibiotic use and decreased incidence of drug-resistant infections. I welcome contributions based on both quantitative and qualitative methods, and hope to receive manuscripts from different geographical, cultural, and socioeconomic settings. I would like to invite you to submit manuscripts covering the following areas:
- Antibiotic stewardship interventions aimed at improving the appropriateness of antibiotic use and the analysis of the gap between the prevalence of co-mixed bacterial infection in patients with COVID-19 infection and frequency of antibiotic prescribing;
- Clinical decision-making in patients with suspected concomitant bacterial co-infections in the course of COVID-19 in primary care (e.g., use of rapid point-of-care tests, lung ultrasound, other lung imaging techniques);
- Interprofessional collaboration in the management of COVID-19 infection, such as implementation of guidelines, severity prediction scales, quality indicators, and interventions promoting collaborative work between general practitioners and hospital physicians.
Keywords
- Antibiotics
- Antimicrobial stewardship
- COVID-19
- Primary care
- SARS-CoV-2
- Point-of-Care Testing