Research Article Antibiotic Use in Children with Acute Respiratory or Ear Infections: Prospective Observational Comparison of Anthroposophic and Conventional Treatment under Routine Primary Care Conditions

Copyright © 2014 Harald J. Hamre et al.This is an open access article distributed under theCreativeCommonsAttribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Children with acute respiratory or ear infections (RTI/OM) are often unnecessarily prescribed antibiotics. Antibiotic resistance is a major public health problem and antibiotic prescription for RTI/OM should be reduced. Anthroposophic treatment of RTI/OM includes anthroposophic medications, nonmedication therapy and if necessary also antibiotics. This secondary analysis from an observational study comprised 529 children <18 years from Europe (AT, DE, NL, and UK) or USA, whose caregivers had chosen to consult physicians offering anthroposophic (A-) or conventional (C-) treatment for RTI/OM. During the 28-day follow-up antibiotics were prescribed to 5.5 % of A-patients and 25.6 % of C-patients