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During the past 15 years, national education programs have focused on eliminating inappropriate use of antibiotics generally and expensive, broad-spectrum antibiotics specifically. To determine whether these programs have had any effect, investigators used data from two national surveys of ambulatory care in physicians' offices and hospital outpatient facilities to assess antibiotic prescribing in 3153 visits by adults for acute bronchitis — a diagnosis for which guidelines explicitly advise against antibiotic therapy in patients without chronic lung disease. Visits that resulted in hospitalization or were associated with chronic pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency, cancer, or other serious conditions were excluded.
Between 1996 and 2010, th…