Does a reduction in antibiotic consumption always represent a favorable outcome from an intervention program on prescribing practice?
In our hospital, a continuous intervention program aimed at optimizing the quality of antibiotic use was introduced by late 1999 and antibiotic consumption was a major outcome for assessment. However, healthcare conditions have been subject to change over the last five years, and a pronounced economic crisis in 2002 affected the availability of antibiotics. Therefore, we hypothesized that the consumption of these drugs could be a suitable indirect marker of the crisis.
