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Clinical guidelines (e.g., NEJM JW Infect Dis May 2012 and Clin Infect Dis 2012; 54:72) recommend 5 to 7 days of antibiotics for acute sinusitis in otherwise low-risk adult patients; use of azithromycin generally is discouraged because of known risk for developing antibiotic resistance. In this study, researchers used a U.S. national prescription database (including nearly 3.7 million sinusitis visits in primary care by adults) to assess prescribed antibiotics by class and prescription duration. Visits for chronic sinusitis or for comorbid diagnoses were excluded.
Nearly 70% of antibiotic prescriptions had durations of 10 days or longer; when azithromycin prescriptions (usually prescribed for 5 days) were excluded, the proportion of prescrip…