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Background: Variation in prescription of antibiotics in primary care can indicate poor clinical practice that contributes to the increase of resistant strains. General Practitioners (GPs), as a professional group, are expected to have a fairly homogeneous prescribing style. In this paper, we describe variation in prescribing style within and across groups of GPs from six countries. Methods: Cross-sectional study with the inclusion of 457 GPs and 6394 sore throat patients. We describe variation in prescribing antibiotics for sore throat patients across six countries and assess whether variation in “prescribing style” - understood as a subjective tendency to prescribe - has an important effect on variation in prescription of antibiotics by using the concept of prescribing style as a latent variable in a multivariable model. We report variation as a Median Odds Ratio (MOR) which is the transformation of the random effect variance onto an odds ratio; Thus, MOR = 1 means similar odds or strict homogeneity between GPs' prescribing style, while a MOR higher than 1 denotes heterogeneity in prescribing style. Results: In all countries some GPs always prescribed antibiotics to all their patients, while other GPs never did. After adjusting for patient and GP characteristics, prescribing style in the group of GPs from Russia was about three times more heterogeneous than the prescribing style in the group of GPs from Denmark - Median Odds Ratio (6.8, 95% CI 3.1;8.8) and (2.6, 95% CI 2.2;4.4) respectively. Conclusion: Prescribing style is an important source of variation in prescription of antibiotics within and across countries, even after adjusting for patient and GP characteristics. Interventions aimed at influencing the prescribing style of GPs must encompass context-specific actions at the policy-making level alongside GP-targeted interventions to enable GPs to react more objectively to the external demands that are in place when making the decision of prescribing antibiotics or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the fourth leading cause of death worldwide. The study aimed to determine and compare the prevalence of COPD in the general population aged 45-74 years old according to fixed ratio and lower limit of normal (LLN) thresholds in four cities in the Southern Cone of Latin America.Methods: The Pulmonary Risk in South America (PRISA) study used a 4-stage stratified sampling method to select 5814 participants from 4 cities in the Southern Cone of Latin America (Bariloche and Marcos Paz, Argentina; Temuco, Chile; and Pando-Barros Blancos, Uruguay). Data on demographic information, medical history, risk factors, pre-bronchodilator and post-bronchodilator spirometry were obtained using a standard protocol. According to GOLD, COPD was defined as a post-bronchodilator ratio of forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) over forced vital capacity (FVC) less than 70%. The LLN threshold was defined as the lower fifth percentile for predicted FEV1/FVC, and was evaluated as an alternative COPD definition.Results: Overall COPD prevalence was 9.3% (95% CI 8.4, 10.2%), and men had a higher prevalence [11.8% (95% CI 10.3, 13.3%)] than women [7.3% (95% CI 6.2, 8.3%)] with the fixed ratio. Overall COPD prevalence using LLN was 4.7% (95% CI 4.1, 5.3%), higher in men: 5.8% (95% CI 4.7, 6.8%) than women: 3.9% (95% CI 3.1, 4.7%). COPD prevalence was significantly higher among those who were older, had Conclusions: First, COPD and its risk factors are highly prevalent in the general population of Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Second, the prevalence of COPD by LLN criterion was significantly lower with lesser degrees of severity compared to fixed ratio of FEV1/FVC. Implementing LLN criterion instead of fixed ratio of FEV1/FVC may reduce the risk of over-diagnosis of COPD, although further prognostic studies of COPD adverse outcomes should be conducted using both definitions. Third, these data suggest that national efforts on the prevention, treatment, and control of COPD should be a public health priority in the Southern Cone of Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]