Clinicians usually do not follow guidelines for adult pharyngitis
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - In treating adult patients with pharyngitis, the problem is not which guidelines primary care practitioners use but that they often don’t follow any guidelines, Harvard investigators assert in the July 10th issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Dr. Jeffrey A. Linder and others at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, set out to measure clinician adherence to any of three sets of treatment guidelines for adult pharyngitis. They conducted a retrospective analysis of visits by 2,097 adults to nine Boston-area primary care clinics.
| “Clinicians were adherent to the American College of Physicians’ empirical strategy in 12% of visits, the American College of Physicians’ test strategy in 30% of visits, the Infectious Diseases Society of America’s strategy in 30% of visits, and adherent to none in 66% of visits,” the team found.   Â
The most common reason for nonadherence to treatment guidelines was testing or prescribing of antibiotics to adults at low risk of streptococcal pharyngitis, but there could be a number of other possibilities, Dr. Linder told Reuters Health. |
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