It is known that in many cases bronchitis has viral causes, so antibiotics are not indicated, but even so, they are prescribed in 60 to 80 percent of cases of acute bronchitis.



Studying inappropriate antibiotic use in older patients is an important thing, because previous antibiotic use is a risk factor for antibiotic resistance in subsequent bacterial infections, and also it is known that older patients are at a greater risk of morbidity and mortality when they get bacterial infections.

There were made studies reviewing hundreds of charts of patients 65 years and older who were diagnosed with acute respiratory infections. There were excluded patients with lung disease, chronic bronchitis, or concurrent acute respiratory infections.

It was seen that in many cases vital signs were not documented in the patients' charts, and when they were, temperatures higher than 37.7 degrees C were noted in 7 percent of patients, 15 percent had a temperature of 37.2 to 37.7 degrees C, and 8 percent had a heart rate of 100 beats per minute or more. It was also seen that more of half of the patients had a duration of illness longer than seven days, and one half of the patients had significant chronic comorbidities. 83 percent of the patients from this study received antibiotics, and the antibiotic prescription rates did not vary in patients with or without comorbidities.

This study shows that antibiotics were frequently prescribed, but with no discernible pattern, and whether or not antibiotics were prescribed in this age group, vital signs had little influence.

In many cases, if left unchecked, bronchitis can lead to pneumonia. Bronchitis is an infection that appears because the inflammation of the bronchial tubes and can be acute or chronic. Acute bronchitis lasts for a few days, but chronic bronchitis can last months or even years.

Being a very common infection, bronchitis can appear because of a virus, bacteria, heartburn, and it is known that even smoking can lead to it. It has symptoms like a dry cough that will entail mucus being brought up out of the lungs, fever, soreness, chills, wheezing and problems breathing.

In order to diagnose bronchitis, the physician will listen to the child's chest and breathing, and after that, if he considers necessary, will order an x-ray to take a further look at the chest. If the infection is caused by a virus, the antibiotics will have no effect, so, in this case you will have to wait for the child's immune system to do its job, and meanwhile you can treat the child if he has the common cold.

Rest, lots of fluids, and over the counter medicines can be helpful to treat this type of bronchitis.