Abstract
Upper respiratory tract infections are a source of extreme illness, causing two to three diseases in adults every year. In childhood, respiratory tract infections are the leading cause of antibiotic prescription in morbidity and outpatient care.
Initial therapy is for the most part empirical and rarely specific based on culture results. The vast majority of respiratory infections are caused by viruses that are not affected by antibiotics; on the contrary, their administration can harm the patient.
A key objective of the best practices is to improve the quality of antibiotic use and reduce antibiotic consumption by reducing prescribing where it is considered to be etiologically ineffective, thereby reducing the growing trends of AR bacteria in the community while maintaining the effectiveness of older and new drugs.