Physician consultation and antibiotic prescription in Swedish infants:: population-based comparison of group daycare and home care

Background: Daycare infants have more infectious episodes, see a physician more often, and are prescribed antibiotics more often than home care infants. Aim: To compare physician consultations and antibiotic prescription in daycare children and home care children taking number of symptom days, sociodemographic factors, concern about infectious illness and antibiotic knowledge into account. Methods: For a cohort of Swedish 18-month-old children all infectious symptoms, physician consultation and antibiotic prescriptions were registered during 1 month. Results: 561 infants with daycare outside the home and 278 with daycare at home were included. Of the daycare infants, 23.2% saw a physician and 11.4% were prescribed antibiotics, as compared with 10.8% physician consultations and 5.0% antibiotic prescription for the home care infants. For daycare infants the crude odds ratio for physician consultation were 2.49 (1.63-3.82) and for antibiotic prescription 2.43 (1.34-4.41) compared with home care infants. However, these differences were no longer statistically significant when background data, concern about infectious illness and reported symptoms were taken into account. Conclusion: When background data, concern about infectious illness and reported infectious symptoms were taken into account daycare infants saw a physician and was prescribed antibiotics in the same way as home care infants