A study released by The Journal of the American Medical Association: Internal Medicine shows that primary care physicians are prescribing longer durations of antibiotics for sinus infections than recommended by clinical practice guidelines.
The study revealed that not only are antibiotics prescribed in the U.S. for sinus infections more often than for any other type of illness, but the duration of prescriptions is much longer than what the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) recommends. IDSA recommends treating acute sinusitis for five to seven days with antibiotics but over 70 percent of antibiotic prescriptions were for 10 days or longer.
Recommendations are to use the shortest effective length of antibiotic treatment in order to help fight antibiotic resistance.
