SFMG - Société Française de Médecine Générale

Décembre 2007 Rosman S, Le Vaillant M, Schellevis F, Clerc P, Verheij R, Pelletier-Fleury N
Background
France and the Netherlands are often presented as two contrasting countries with regard to drug prescriptions and consumption. This study aimed to analyse general practitioners’ (GP's) prescription patterns for upper respiratory tract infections (URTI). Methods: Data on diagnoses and prescriptions were derived from two databases recording daily electronic medical patient files: the ‘Société Française de Médecine Générale’ database (SFMG-DB) and the Dutch Landelijk Informatie Netwerk Huisatsenzorg database (LINH-DB). Logit regression models were developed to estimate and compare prescription patterns in both countries. We carried out a study including all the patients consulting for URTI in 2003. Results: French GPs had more URTI patients than their Dutch counterparts (372.1 URTI patients/GP versus 181.3). They prescribed higher volumes of URTI medications (3.55 per patient/year versus 0.82). Striking differences were observed in analgesic and symptomatic prescriptions (0.84 per patient/year versus 0.12 and 1.01 per patient/year versus 0.21, respectively). We did not observe important discrepancies in volume of antibiotic prescriptions (0.29 per patient/year in France versus 0.32). After adjustment for patient characteristics, the logit model showed that prescription patterns for antibiotic were quite similar and associated with a diagnosis of acute tonsillitis. Conclusion: The analysis per consultation in this study did not highlight important differences in antibiotic prescribing volumes and patterns. But symptomatic and analgesic prescriptions were significantly higher in the French database. This can be explained by differences in help-seeking behaviour, medication perception, status of OTC medications and remuneration system.
Mots Clés
Regarding antibiotic prescriptions, GPs’ prescribing
patterns for URTI patients did not demonstrate large
discrepancies between French and Dutch GPs.
But French GPs prescribed four times more symptomatic
and analgesic medications for URTI than their
Dutch counterparts.
Differences in help-seeking attitudes, medication
perceptions and remuneration system may explain
the large differences in symptomatic and analgesic
prescriptions.
200 @ app_publication_show
HTTP status 200 OK
Route name app_publication_show
Has session yes
Stateless Check no
417 ms
Total time 417 ms
Initialization time 75 ms
28.0 MiB
Peak memory usage 28.0 MiB
PHP memory limit 512 MiB
1
Number of forms 1
Number of errors 0
15
Errors 0
Warnings 0
Deprecations 15
12 in 0.62 ms
Cache Calls 12
Total time 0.62 ms
Cache hits 12 / 12 (100%)
Cache writes 0
3
Default locale fr
Missing messages 3
Fallback messages 0
Defined messages 0
n/a
Authenticated No
Firewall name main
229 ms
Render Time 229 ms
Template Calls 18
Block Calls 44
Macro Calls 0
68 in 30.99 ms
Database Queries 68
Different statements 24
Query time 30.99 ms
Invalid entities 16
Second Level Cache disabled
5.4.35
Profiler token ce618f
Environment dev
Debug enabled
PHP version 7.4.33   View phpinfo()
PHP Extensions xdebug ✗ APCu ✗ OPcache ✓
PHP SAPI fpm-fcgi