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Background: Sore throat is a frequent presentation of acute respiratory tract infections in general practice. Though these infections are often harmless and self-limiting, antibiotics are frequently prescribed. In Denmark, practice nurses manage an increasing part of patients with acute minor illnesses.Objectives: We aimed (i) to investigate Danish practice nurses' and GPs' management of patients presenting with a sore throat and (ii) to explore to what extent management is according to current Danish guidelines.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted during winter 2017, involving GPs and practice nurses in Danish general practices. Patients with a sore throat were registered according to the Audit Project Odense method.Results: A total of 44 practices participated with the registration of 1503 patients presenting with a sore throat. Most patients had a strep A test performed, especially when managed by a practice nurse (84.6% versus 61.8%, χ2 = 90.1, P < 0.05). In total, 40.6% of performed strep A tests were not according to guideline recommendations. Antibiotics were prescribed for about one-third of patients, regardless whether managed by a practice nurse or a GP (χ2 = 0.33, P = 0.57). However, 32.4% of these prescriptions were not in line with Danish guidelines.Conclusion: Patients with acute sore throat were managed similarly by GPs and practice nurses, apart from a higher use of strep A tests in patients seen by practice nurses. Importantly, this study demonstrated that there is still room for improvement of the management of these patients in Danish general practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Health care databases are a valuable source for epidemiological research in respiratory diseases if diagnoses are valid. We validated the International Classification of Diseases, 10th revision (ICD-10) diagnosis of pleural empyema in the Danish National Registry of Patients (DNRP)., Methods: We randomly selected hospitalized patients registered in the DNRP with a discharge diagnosis of pleural empyema between 1995 and 2009 in the North Denmark Region. We retrieved and reviewed medical records and estimated the positive predictive value (PPV) of the empyema diagnosis. Analyses were stratified by study period, hospital type (referral versus district), department type (pulmonary medicine or thoracic surgery versus other), cause of empyema (medical, surgical, or traumatic), and age group. To assess changes over time, we included chi-square tests for linear trend., Results: We retrieved the medical records of 224/225 sampled patients with empyema (99.6%). Of those, 182 were classified as being definite cases, and 21 were probable cases, yielding a PPV of 90.6% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 86.0-94.1). The PPV decreased from 95.7% in patients aged 15-39 years to 87.5% in patients aged 80 years and over but was uniformly high regardless of study period, hospital or department type, or cause of empyema., Conclusion: Our finding of a high overall PPV indicated good agreement between ICD-10 codes for pleural empyema and medical records. Registry-based discharge codes may be a suitable source of data on pleural empyema for epidemiological research.